go organic. save your health. go chemical-free.sickening fact: up to 60 per cent of what's applied to your skin soaks through
to your blood vessels and ends up in your liver. yikes. (October 7-13, 2004, Issue 1186, Volume 24, No. 6)
You're best buying goods with a purely natual ingredient list, but don'tSome organic/biodynamic/fair trade/natural companies:
sink your dollar into just any products labelled "natural" or "organic." Canada
and most of the U.S. have no regs governing the use of these terms. In
California, the only state with standards, a product of 70 per cent organic
ingredients may call itself organic even if the rest is synthetic or
petroleum-based!
Read ingredient lists carefully. You can generally spot chemical names
pretty easily, and take note when only one or two ingredients are actually
organic. Be aware that "hydrosol" is just a fancy name for distilled water,
which is often used to pump up the organic contents on a label. On the other
hand, it can be very difficult to make 100 per cent certified organic products,
since many essential oils and other ingredients aren't readily available in that
form.
By the way, despite what many people think, the Body Shop isn't all that
natural. If you ask to see its ingredient lists, you'll notice that mango butter
cream or coconut cleanser is chock full of synthetics. On the upper end of the
price scale, Kielh's (Queen West) says it tries to be natural and organic
ingredients whenever possible, but online label scans still pull up
petroleum-based and synthetic ingredients. Aveda (now owned by Estee Lauder)
also claims to include plant-derived ingredients whenever possible and to abide
by strong sustainability practices, but it [Aveda] makes no promises about avoiding
synthetics. And Aveda products only contain some organics.
