Living Cruelty Free

I thought I’d write up exactly how I shop for cruelty-free products. When I first started buying cruelty-free products I found it a little daunting, so I think this might be useful to those of you who are considering adding more cruelty-free products to your medicine cabinet.

First, I shop at health food stores.

As you may have guessed, it’s difficult to buy many CCIC-approved products at Longs, Walgreens, Safeway, Albertson’s, etc. (Though that is changing! Longs now sells a bunch of cruelty-free products — Alba Botanica, Kiss My Face, and Jason.) So out of necessity, I buy most of my household/cosmetic products from health-food stores. A lot of CCIC-approved companies have to market their products in health food stores: the companies are either too small to purchase distribution deals on national grocery store shelves, or they feel their products probably don’t appeal to the mass market. Also I’d say 50% of the CCIC-approved companies seem to have an eco-friendly/organic attitude as well, so health food stores are the logical place for them to be.

Now, a lot of you may have no problem with shopping in health food stores — you’ve probably been shopping at health food stores since you were kids. However, I was raised in a strictly Safeway/Lucky/Albertsons/Ralphs household, so that was a bit of a problem for me. It really embarrassed me to go to a health food store for the first time to buy some Aubrey Organics shampoo (of course they don’t sell that at Longs), and I had to navigate my way through all the intimidating hippified and/or highly-pierced people who shopped there (I’m kind of preppy). But now I’ve grown used to it and enjoy my trips to health food stores and the people I meet there. (Not that every brand sold at health food stores is CCIC-approved. I’d say only about 25% are — it’s always good to take the CCIC list along with you.)

A benefit of shopping at health food stores for me has been that I’ve found a lot of really interesting stuff there. You don’t realize it when you shop at Safeway, but Procter & Gamble owns almost everything sold on the shelves at national grocery chains. Those numerous brands of cleaning products, canned food, jarred food, bagged food, etc — those are all made by one company that just pretends to be many different ones. Procter & Gamble is lying to you! All those products are really all the same thing with a slightly different label. If you shop at health food stores you will find that health food stores tend to not buy anything made by Procter & Gamble on principle, and you become exposed to numerous diverse small-time brands of cleaning products, canned food, jarred food, bagged food, etc. I’ve found it to be far, far more interesting — even if you’re like me and have a strong belief in science and not much of a belief in herbal remedies, you can still enjoy buying independently-branded products at the health food store. They’re more interesting, unusual, and exciting. Not to mention usually more ethical, organic, and vegan.

I also shop at what I call “upscale eco-friendly drugstores.” These are a new development that is sweeping the San Francisco bay area, and I hope will soon be sweeping the nation. They are basically chains of drugstores that sell a lot of eco-friendly products in an upscale way — the ones I’ve seen are called Pharmaca and Elephant Pharmacy. They’re not quite as funky and interesting as most health food stores, but they’re a little more nonhippy/nonbepierced-person-friendly, and they’re more aimed at the person who is interested in being eco-friendly and doing yoga, but is also kind of interested in upscale cosmetics. They tend to carry about 25% CCIC-approved-animal-testing-free products, and they’re a little easier to go to if you find the health food store thing too intimidating, or you want to find a store that will combine your interests in yoga, fair trade handbags, cruelty-free/organic makeup, eco-friendly cleaning products, and wine and cheese picnics. They’re also kind of fun.

Second, I also shop at the few local stores near me that sell CCIC-approved products.

Whole Foods sells a lot of CCIC-approved products. I shop there occasionally, and I would LOVE to shop there more often, but the closest Whole Foods to me is extremely popular, and I hate crowds, so I don’t go there frequently. However, if I go to the suburbs and see a Whole Foods I tend to drop in — the lines are SO MUCH shorter there, and Whole Foods always has a great selection of CCIC-approved products as well as incredible produce and a huge baked goods section (made with cage-free-only eggs!).

I also buy all my Method products at Target, a few upscale cosmetics from Sephora (Hard Candy, Urban Decay, L’Occitane), and I sometimes go to PureBeauty, which carries a lot of Dermalogica and Paul Mitchell stuff. (I’ve never used it, but Sephora’s return policy is supposed to be very good, which makes me feel much more relaxed about shopping there.)

Third, I buy a lot of stuff online.

The internet shopping experience is a little less immediate than buying things at health food stores, but it’s nicer in a way because it allows me to really shop around for the best deals, and it’s a little more relaxing to look up whether a product is on the CCIC’s list or not in the privacy of my own home instead of feeling like a dork while I consult a list I brought with me to the store. I buy most of my Dermalogica products from Whatgreatskin.com because the prices are good, Juice Organics products directly from juiceorganics.com, and probably a few other things directly from other online sources as well that I can’t remember at this time. I occasionally buy stuff from Amazon or Drugstore.com as well — Paul Mitchell products mostly.

When shopping online, I’ve found google’s shopping search feature and yahoo’s shopping search feature very useful. (Though for the more obscure CCIC-approved companies, just going to www.google.com is by far the best option — small companies’ stuff won’t show up on any fancy product search function.)

I’ve also found it very useful to try to get myself above the free shipping minimum — a lot of places have deals where if you buy $75 your shipping charges are waived. I think drugstore.com’s shipping-waiving hurdle is $50. (I actually think it’s really shortsighted of retailers to charge shipping charges at all — I can’t tell you how many times I’ve decided to not buy anything because I just wanted to buy a few $5 products and I couldn’t bring myself to pay the $15 shipping fee and didn’t really feel like hunting around the website to find $50 worth of toiletries. I tend to spend a lot more at sites with free shipping. (Amazon!))

The only real problem I’ve ever had with internet shopping is that I have to be careful to make sure the internet site I’m trying to buy from is a real website and not a scam. So, if I find a product I’d really like to buy on a website, I make sure the website looks like a legitimate business. I do this in a number of ways — I see if it has a yahoo business rating or a better business bureau certification, and I google the name of the website to see if anyone has posted a review of it on an online forum or in a blog saying whether it’s a legitimate business or not. If I’m very lucky, I’ll find a company that also markets its stuff through Amazon Marketplace, which is REALLY nice — I know that if they do not send me my stuff Amazon will retaliate against them. If I can’t find a certification or a recommendation, or the company is not listed on Amazon Marketplace, I won’t buy from that website, no matter how good the deal is. I just assume it’s some kind of scam.

Fourth, wherever I’m buying from, I usually try to buy a bunch of stuff in travel size or small size containers.

That is because I really hate being stuck with a 16oz bottle of some product that doesn’t work for me. One of the reasons I don’t use Drugstore.com very much is it seems to sell only a few travel sized containers of Paul Mitchell products.

Fifth, I wait until all my cruel products run out before replacing them with cruelty-free products.

(Though sometimes it’s good to buy travel sizes before I completely run out of some products — what if the sample product doesn’t work very well? I want to be prepared).

Sixth, if I find I’m really missing a cruel product, I allow myself to keep buying that cruel product while hunting for a good replacement.

When I was starting out buying cruelty-free products I used to wait until I ran out of a cruel product, buy a cruelty-free product to replace it, and sometimes that cruelty-free product just wouldn’t work for me, and I would become frustrated, and go back to my cruel product. And I would beat myself up about it and feel terrible for the poor rats and rabbits that were being sacrificed for my toiletries. But then I hit upon a solution: I kept buying the cruel product, but experimenting with (travel size) cruelty-free products until I found ones that would be as good as the cruel product. Case in point: I used Bumble & Bumble shampoo and conditioner for at least a year before finding Paul Mitchell shampoo and Dermalogica conditioner that would work as well for my hair. I bought travel sizes of NUMEROUS shampoos and conditioners and used them intermittently with Bumble & Bumble until I found some that worked. The occasional bad hair day due to shampoo that makes my hair limp, greasy, and frizzy (how? all at once? I’ll never figure it out) is something I can stand — a whole month of bad hair is really not something I can live with. Once I found the Paul Mitchell and Dermalogica products, I stopped using Bumble & Bumble. But I could never have made the switch away from Bumble & Bumble if I’d quit cold turkey.

Seventh, and most importantly, I try to have fun buying cruelty-free products.

While I’ve made a serious commitment to only buying cruelty-free products, I don’t dwell on all the products I’m giving up. Instead, I enjoy finding new companies with products to try, going to health food stores and browsing the new products, and keeping up with new products that CCIC-approved companies come out with. I read reviews of products on Makeupalley and SustainLane and think about what I’d like to buy in the future. I focus on how peaceful I feel to be buying products that do not contribute in any way to animal abuse. And I reason that any company that cares enough about animal testing has got to be producing a better product than any company that doesn’t.

I hope this gives you some ideas on how to shop and where to shop for cruelty-free products!

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