Environmentally Friendly Vegan Skin Care | What It Is + Benefits
Are you at a stage in your level of awareness where you’re seriously thinking about the footprint you’re leaving and the effect your activities are having on the planet? If so, you’re probably familiar with the words “vegan” and “environmentally friendly”.
Both words represent a world where everything is geared towards the safety and health of the planet. You might be familiar with the “vegan diet” and “environmental-friendly” practices as it applies to global warming, but vegan skincare might be relatively new to you.
In this article, we’ll explore what environmentally friendly skin care is and the benefits it holds for you and mother earth.
What Does Environmentally Friendly Mean?
Environmentally friendly refers to any product or service that is not harming the environment. According to collinsdictionary.com, anything that has “no or the least possible impact on the environment” is environmentally friendly.
The idea is that everything we do has the potential to affect the environment. For example, a lot of plastic waste ends up in the ocean, causing harm to marine life and ultimately the planet.
Any environmentally friendly product is produced with the health and safety of the planet in mind, the whole process, from manufacturing to distributing, is done in a way that has no or the least possible impact on the environment.
Being environmentally friendly means putting our larger home (planet earth) first in everything we do and doing our best to work towards its preservation as much as possible.
Every year, the world generates approximately 400 million tonnes of chemical waste.
What Does Vegan Mean?
Being vegan means excluding meat and animal products like milk and cheese from your diet. As it concerns skincare, vegan skincare excludes animal-derived ingredients in the formulation of products.
The hallmark of the vegan diet and vegan skin care is the exclusion of anything derived from animals. The vegan culture is geared toward the preservation of animal lives and the reduction and eradication of animal cruelty.
What Is Environmentally Friendly Vegan Skin Care
From the description of the two words “environmentally friendly” and “vegan skincare” it is easy to deduce that environmentally friendly vegan skin care is an umbrella term for all skin care products that are produced for the health and preservation of the planet in mind.
These products exclude all animal products and byproducts from their manufacturing and formulating process and use only naturally-sourced and plant-derived ingredients.
Identifying Vegan Skin Care Products
The best way to identify if a product is vegan is to do a little research on the company or brand behind the product. Most times vegan skincare brands proudly make it known that they don’t use animal products and are strictly vegan when choosing ingredients for their products.
Another way is to take a hands-on approach and read the small print, and the ingredients. You can look out for ingredients like aloe, shea butter, green tea, tea tree, and grapeseed extract.
Environmentally friendly and vegan skincare brands are also big on bottle recycling. Some products have to be housed in plastic bottles, which can end up being plastic waste.
Having a strong bottle recycling program is one of the things that make any brand environmentally friendly, this means they have the health of the planet in mind and put programs in place to make sure the plastic bottles used in packaging their products (when they have to) don’t end up in the ocean as waste, harming marine life.
At La Verne, we support wildlife to protect our planet. You can check out our page dedicated to environmental protection (https://lavernecosmetics.com/pages/environmental-protection) to see and understand how we’re doing our part to contribute to the protection and preservation of the planet.
Are Vegan Skin Care Products Cruelty-Free?
“Cruelty-free” means a product has not been tested on animals by the producer or supplier, or anyone along the supply chain.
This can be a bit confusing, a product can be vegan and free of animal byproducts, but it might have been tested on animals. And a product might be “cruelty-free” but contain animal by-products.
This means vegan doesn’t necessarily translate to cruelty-free, and vice versa. The best way to know in which category any product or brand falls is to do your research and be acquainted with their processes and practices. Pay attention to the ingredients used in the products and the practices and cultures of the brand behind the product.
This implies a level of awareness that pays close attention to what happens on the backend when it comes to skincare products.
Is Vegan Skin Care Better For You?
Now that we’ve explained what environmentally-friendly vegan skin care is and the vital things that surround it, the next real question is, is it worth it? Are there benefits attached to vegan skincare that make the change worthy of the effort it requires?
There are numerous advantages to using vegan skincare products.
Some of the benefits of vegan skincare are listed below:
1. Best For Skin
To truly understand the benefits of vegan skincare for your skin, you need to understand and be acquainted with a simple fact: the skin absorbs 60% of what you apply to it. That is the goal of using skin care products, to have the ingredients seep into the skin and do their magic.
Now, with this simple truth, it is obvious that introducing chemicals to your skin defeats the purpose of skin care. The best way to nurture your skin is to use natural and pure plant-based products. The ingredients are natural and have no or minimal synthetic materials and additives.
Vegan skincare ingredients like aloe, tea tree, chamomile, and other effective plant extracts work wonders on the skin. They are easy on the skin, make the skin healthier and beautiful, and don’t hurt the environment.
2. Good for the Planet
Vegan skin care products are eco-friendly. Ingredients are extracted from plants that are organically cultivated and no harm is done to animals. The packaging is made with recyclable materials and serious efforts are made to make everything in an environmentally sustainable manner.
Adopting vegan skin care products is a great way to contribute your quota to saving our planet and preventing environmental degradation
3. Good for your Health
We mentioned earlier that the skin absorbs 60% of what you apply to it. This means having synthetic chemicals in your skincare products might be bad for your health in the long run. You don’t want a buildup of harsh chemicals in your system.
Using vegan skin care means you introduce only natural ingredients to your skin and you prevent complications like rashes, acne, or serious health problems like skin cancer.