In honor of Ashlie from the fabulous SixExits.com’s writing a beautiful post in honor of Blog Action Day, about why she has become a cruelty-freeist and vegetarian (and she linked to my blog! I’m so honored!), I thought I’d compile a list of organic, cruelty-free cosmetic/household products. I think organic products are environmentally-friendly because they do not encourage the use of pesticides and don’t release any synthetic chemicals into the water supply that may adversely affect wildlife, and cruelty-free products are environmentally-friendly because they do not promote hurting and killing laboratory animals, which I think are an important part of the environment. (I’d love to buy biodynamic, rain forest certified, food alliance certified, forest stewardship council certified, nonGMO certified, bird certified, and biodegradable certified products as well, but I haven’t found that list. Also I suspect it’s a pretty short list. So I’m sticking with just organic. For now.)
Organic, Cruelty-Free Products:
Dr. Bronner’s (sort of organic)
Healthy Times Baby’s Herbal Garden
Heather’s Natural and Organic Cleaning Products
Melvita (France)
(Have I missed any? If you find any CCIC-approved-cruelty-free, organic brands, please tell me. Or if I am including some that you don’t think are especially organic, or if I should include some that may not be organic but are good for the environment in other ways, please tell me too.)
Categories : against animal testing, cruelty free, organic
RSS feed for comments on this post
Intoxicated Zodiac Blog » blog action day - a call to arms
October 16th, 2007 at 7:33 pm
[...] good soldiers in the effort were THE INADVERTENT GARDENER and LIVING CRUELTY FREE mixed by Gwenshaken in [...]
Kate
October 29th, 2008 at 3:30 pm
Thank you for giving us so many resources on cruelty free products. It wasn’t until about a year ago that I really started to research products I was using and I was shocked at what they actually put in our cosmetics! It’s actually really scary! So now, I only use products that have organic ingredients and do not test on animals. It’s great that there’s websites like this to educate people because most people are really naive to what goes into popular products in grocery and drug store chains. If you have time, check out my blog, sweetfuzz.com. It’s a lifestyle blog about natural living. Thanks again!
Emily
November 1st, 2008 at 6:56 pm
Hi Kate!
I’m so glad my site has helped you in any way — and I’m so glad to find another cruelty-freeist! Your blog looks wonderful, by the way — I love the anti-animal testing and pro-prop-2 posts (and the color scheme — that’s very pretty!) — I think I’ll add you to my blogroll
Regards,
Ann
January 27th, 2009 at 2:07 pm
Hello Emily,
Thanks for your website. I’m inquiring further about the definition of cruelty free. To me, cruelty free means no animal ingredients as well as no testing individual ingredients and no testing the final product on animals, nor no outsourcing to do so. Do you subscribe to that? If so, does that mean that Mary Kay cosmetics uses no animal ingredients? I think they do….Hope to hear your thoughts on this. Thanks!
Emily
January 27th, 2009 at 9:41 pm
Hi Ann!
You’re very welcome! Ooh — you’ve really picked up on something it takes most people months to figure out. The term “cruelty-free” is extremely vague. It’s used to mean all sorts of things by all sorts of people. Unfortunately, its most accepted use is “animal-testing-free.” So that’s what I use it to mean. It really SHOULD mean vegan AND animal-testing-free, but most often, it doesn’t. (Why? I don’t understand. Historic reasons, perhaps?)
However, the good news is that it’s (fairly) easy to determine whether a product is vegan or not. Read the ingredients on the back. There’s a huge vegan mafia out there trying to determine what is, and isn’t vegan. Though there are still some grey areas — is refined sugar vegan? Not if you’re a stickler — because animal byproducts are used in the refining process to make it.
So, for me anyway, I’m mostly interested in certifying what is, and is not, animal-testing-free, because I can’t determine that by looking at the bottle. (Though arguably, you can’t bring the list of the numerous polysyllabic chemical ingredients that are, and are not vegan, with you to the store without looking like a total dork. But that’s a separate issue.)
So, to answer your question — I’m sorry to disappoint you, but Mary Kay is not certified vegan by anybody. It may have animal products in it. It’s just certified animal-testing-free. So no lab rats were tortured to produce Mary Kay products, but there might be animal matter inside the products. Sorry!
(I feel odd suggesting it, because I have no experience with it, but have you considered Arbonne? It’s a lot like Mary Kay, but is both animal-testing-free, and vegan.)
Anyway, I fully support your defining “cruelty-free” as both vegan and non-animal-tested, and I hope the big players in the U.S. come around to that definition in the future. It would be REALLY NICE if PETA and the Leaping Bunny people would go along with that idea.
Vegan Action actually has a vegan and cruelty-free list out there, it’s the only one I know of:
http://www.vegan.org/campaigns/certification/company_list/index.html
Anyway, thanks for writing in, and you’ve made me remember that I’ve always wanted to come up with a list of vegan, animal-testing-free products, on my own. I’ll definitely want to create one of those some time this year, perhaps.
Shazia
January 29th, 2009 at 12:46 am
This list of Organic product. This product is very workable and have useful quality. I like this quality very well.
Emily
January 29th, 2009 at 9:19 am
Dear Shazia,
So glad I could help!
7 Responses