Yuty is a company built on conscious principles, so we regularly scour the news for reports on whether the mainstream beauty industry is adopting Yuty’s approach to sustainability.
Recently, we were ecstatic to hear about the launch of Chanel's new clean beauty line, No. 1 de Chanel. Naturally, we wanted to understand whether this was a genuine product, without falsity —or if it was another example of the greenwashing the beauty industry is sadly becoming famous for. We asked our cosmetic scientist, Amina Ajayi, how to read beyond the packaging of beauty products, and how to be more informed when facing ingredient lists and marketing jargon.
The Anatomy of Your Beauty Product
The basics. Standard rules apply to labelling, enforced by consumer protection agencies the world over. First, the company's name must be listed clearly. Next, ingredients must be listed in order of decreasing weight. Therefore, if the first ingredient lists 'water' or aqua, followed by 'Glycerin', that means there is more water than Glycerin in the product. Naturally, products cannot contain prohibited ingredients that are known to be harmful to human health and must show danger warnings regarding handling—like aerosol cans, which must be kept away from high heat.
Where there's leeway. A company has the right to decide how they want to position their products in competition with other products. Whether a company wishes to be perceived as 'very natural' or 'very synthetic' on the scale of ingredient processing, is allowed. We recently discussed the difference between organic and natural products, and the guidelines around labelling something as 'organic' are a great example of this flexibility. "Products can be labelled as 100% organic if 95% of all the ingredients were produced organically. If less than 95% of the contents are organic, businesses must obtain certification from an organic control body, and be registered, to carry out labelling products as organic."