Emily,

Great blog! I’m new to buying cruelty free and would like to find “good” (reliable, conscientious, reasonably-priced) sites for purchasing online. Any thoughts/tips?

Also, have you found any cruelty-free replacement for After Party?

Grace & peace.

 Hi!

I’m so glad you’re looking for cruelty-free products! The answer to your question is a little complicated — there are a bunch of sites out there that are reliable and reasonably well priced that sell some 100%-cruelty-free products — I’ve bought stuff from VeganEssentials.com, Sephora.com, Drugstore.com, and Amazon, and they’re all pretty good.

Unfortunately a lot of the really great cruelty-free products are only available from websites that are mom-and-pop operations and are probably great, but might be scams. I actually have had really good luck ordering stuff from Amazon Marketplace — you’re probably familiar with that, but if you’re not, it’s small online stores selling their stuff through Amazon, and Amazon Marketplace stores come up right in any search you do on Amazon. (Unfortunately Amazon Marketplace stores usually don’t qualify for Amazon Prime, which is a serious downside (for me, anyway!)) I really like the Amazon Marketplace because it combines the best of both worlds — you can buy the more interesting (and usually better-priced) cruelty-free products from these funky little stores, but Amazon will go after them if they “forget” your order.  

Unfortunately, none of these places sell ONLY cruelty-free items other than White Rabbit Beauty, which is a lovely store that I highly recommend if you’re looking to buy cosmetics — everything there is 100%-cruelty-free!  You can buy anything you like there without researching it.

So if you’re not buying directly from a Leaping-Bunny approved company, or White Rabbit Beauty, you will have to keep referring back to my list of 100%-cruelty-free products to see whether the products VeganEssentials.com sells are really 100%-cruelty-free.  Surprisingly enough, many of them are not.  Most vegan-certified products aren’t cruelty-free certified as well.  (Why?  It is a great mystery to me.)

(Speaking of mom-and-pop operations that make really great cruelty-free products — I should mention here that all the advertisements on this blog are made by 100%-cruelty-free-leaping-bunny-approved companies, and are NOT scams — I have emailed all of them, and real live people who care about the Leaping Bunny certification have emailed me back — you can click on any ad here and be sent to a Real Live Online Store.  Seriously.  You won’t be asked to send money to Nigeria or anything like that. )

Unfortunately I haven’t found any cruelty-free replacement for After Party. Though I have half a giant tube of it left, so I think I’m good for the next five years. If you find one — you’ll email me about it, right? Please?

Grace and peace to you too!

Regards,

Emily

Categories : cruelty free, dear emily