Let's be honest: We're almost entirely sold when a skincare brand claims to be organic, natural, or chemical-free. Our perception becomes biased towards the brand because we associate 'natural' and 'organic' with everything that's good for our skin.

Unfortunately, the picture isn’t as clear as you think it to be. Today, a plethora of brands turn to greenwashing— using world-class marketing to spin a story and sell less-than-safe products to an increasingly eco-conscious and skincare-savvy audience.

What Is Clean Beauty?

A number of skincare enthusiasts seem to be using the term all the time. Let’s cut to the chase – what is clean beauty?

“Clean beauty is associated with the usage of skincare that is safe, non-toxic, and effective. These products can be either natural or synthetic. While there’s no clear-cut formula to buying clean products, keeping an eye out for certain ingredients can help.”

Dermatologists have been urging people to buy clean products since years now. This is to keep counter-effective reactions like redness and breakouts, at bay.

Clean Beauty++ and Why It’s Better Than Clean Beauty

At Yours, we go beyond the industry standards of 'clean beauty', and strongly believe that products should be good for your skin and the environment.

To put simply:

All ingredients that go into our product formulations are safe and non-toxic.

Our products are formulated in adherence to the European Commission’s Cosmetic Regulations, which bans the use of 1,400 harmful ingredients, including parabens, in cosmetic products.

We work exclusively with trusted suppliers— with full visibility into their supply chain.

Currently, there's a lot of white labelling of products with little or no transparency into ingredients and its sources. At Yours, we invest in the quality of our formulations and care where our ingredients come from. We ensure that we have full transparency into the partners we work with and their supply chain, and that ingredients are ethically sourced and environmentally sustainable.

All our ingredients and formulations are tested, at both an ingredient and product level, for safety and efficacy.

Rigorous testing has been done in-vivo and in-vitro (and never on animals), to ensure the stability of our formulas at both an active ingredient level, and at a product level.

The Process of Product Formulation at Yours

So you’re sold on the idea of clean beauty++. Now, you’re left wondering how this really works. At Yours, we don't just value clean beauty++ but also 100% personalised skincare. Here’s how it works:

• Take our free skin test to let our experts a sneak peek into your skin type and needs.
• From the test, we extract information about your skin, lifestyle, and environment. The data is fed into our intricately designed algorithm, and your skin is decoded.
• A list of the clean skincare ingredients (toxin-free, sustainable, ethical, and cruelty-free) you need is created.
• A product is curated specially for your needs.
• The final formulation goes through safety and efficacy tests.

Easy peasy, right? All that’s really needed to tread on the clean beauty++ path, is to take a free skin test (and make the payment, of course). Part of our ethics involve paying our employees on time ;)

Thereon, leave it all on us..

The Art of Avoiding Greenwashed Products

Now, we’re not tying you down to making purchases from Yours. One of the motives of this blog post was to equip you with the know-hows of buying skincare that stands true to its claims.

If you’re concerned about where your product comes from, and the implications it has for the environment, you’re just like us. Unfortunately, there are no cheat codes for ensuring that your purchases are truly green.

Brands are certainly attempting to keep up with the green trend. However, amidst muddled-up industrial standards and a lack of stern regulations, consumers are being duped.

Greenwashing refers to practices that make misleading claims about a product being green. Such claims make the product look like an environmentally conscious option, but aren’t really so. Unfortunately, this practice is only unethical, and not illegal.

To avoid being deceived by greenwashed skincare, practice what follows:

• Consider all the ingredients that go into the product, and not just the principal ones.
• Skim through the packaging. Go through the ingredients section carefully.
• Educate yourself – read up on where ingredients come from. Note that just because a component is natural, doesn’t mean it’s sustainable. Think palm oil. Palm oil plantations often require the clearing of vast areas of tropical rain forests. This leads to deforestation, extinction of orangutans, and so on.
• Look out for greenwashing terms like chemical-free, natural, organic, preservative-free, etc. Just because a product is any or all of these, doesn’t make it green.
• Hunt for a brand that really aligns with your principles, and stay loyal to it.

So, that’s all about clean beauty++. Take a bow – you made it to the end.

Contrary to what a lot of people assume, consuming a product doesn’t always have two sides to it. Just because it benefits you, doesn’t mean it must harm another. While a majority of brands in the industry do fit this assumption, many don’t.

In the end, it’s all about educating yourself, doing your research, and consuming what aligns with your ideals. 

Now that you know about skincare that's effective, safe, sustainable, and ethical, take our free skin assessment to understand more about the active, Swiss ingredients curated for your skin's health and needs!