By: Zayna Azimi
What is Clean Beauty?
Clean beauty has been buzzing around in the makeup industry for brands to claim safe, non-toxic products. However, ‘clean beauty’ is an unregulated term, meaning it can be vague and does not have to meet any standards or qualifications in order to be labeled as such. This means any brand can claim they are “clean beauty”. Can a brand be considered “clean beauty” if they contain organic ingredients? Does cruelty-free qualify as “clean beauty”? Don’t stress! Here we’ll break down what clean beauty means to BiotechBeauty®.
Complex Ingredients Are Harmful: Fiction!
You may have heard people say, “If you can’t pronounce an ingredient name, don’t use it”. This phrase creates the assumption that complex ingredients are unnatural or harmful. So let's clear a few things up. Natural ingredients are chemicals themselves, and synthetic ingredients are not always bad! Chemicals are the building blocks to everything–water, your lip gloss, even you!
Natural ingredients are chemicals derived from nature while synthetic ingredients are chemicals made in the lab. Chemicals are in virtually everything. For example, fruits are organic and still made of a variety of chemical compounds like vitamins, minerals, sugars, and organic acids. Now, imagine listing out all the ingredients in an apple. This list would consist of around 300 substances! Sounds pretty scary, but still all natural.
Don’t Be Scared of Large Chemical Names!
Like we said, chemicals are in virtually everything. If we called everything by their chemical name, it might seem a bit intimidating. For example, the chemical name for water is dihydrogen oxide. So a reminder from one STEM girlie-founded company to you– chemicals aren’t always scary!
Beauty brands just tend to list chemical names as it is standard.
Organic Ingredients Are Always better: Fiction!
Science-powered makeup create lab-made ingredients that are biologically identical to their organic counterparts, meaning they both function the same. This is called being biomimetic. So why do cosmetic chemists choose to make an ingredient in the lab when it can be extracted organically? The answer is that these synthetic substances are often more ethical, sustainable, and pure. For example, squalene is derived from shark liver. That’s why we formulate with squalane–it’s lab-made twin.This not only ensures we are being cruelty-free, but also ensures that we deliver a higher quality product since clinically tested makeup is evaluated through rigorous testing in order to meet regulatory standards.
Biotechnology allows for a higher standard of 1) purity and 2) potency. This means there is a higher concentration of the active ingredient in your product, which directly impacts how effective an ingredient is for your skin.
Clean Beauty is Vegan and Cruelty-free: Fact!
To us, clean beauty doesn’t just stop at creating safe cosmetics for sensitive skin, but also making sure these are ethically sourced and sustainable! BiotechBeauty® is certified by PETA to be both vegan and cruelty-free because here, beauty is not pain. We choose to formulate with vegan collagen and lab-made mica to avoid causing environmental damage caused by the traditional sourcing of their unethical counterparts (*cough cough* bovine collagen and unethically harvested traditional mica), and it performs even better! Clean beauty with a conscience? Yes, please.
Read here to learn more about BiotechBeauty®’s ethical vegan collagen.
Read here to learn more about BiotechBeauty®’s ethical lab-made mica
Clean Beauty is Non-comedogenic: Fact!
Clean beauty is often associated with skin-loving ingredients that won’t irritate your skin, so checking if a product is non-comedogenic should definitely be first on your checklist. Non-comedogenic makeup is formulated to clog your pores, so you can pack on the blush without worrying about it breaking you out later. More than that, at BiotechBeauty®, our products are composed of 83% skincare active ingredients (meaning that the majority of our makeup is actually made of skincare!). So not only is it different from other makeup brands that clog your pores, but our makeup products such as BiomeBlush®, actually improve your skin as you wear it!
What Does Clean Beauty Mean at BiotechBeauty®?
While every brand defines clean beauty differently, here’s what it means to us: clinically backed makeup that performs like skincare. And because we love to be overacheviers, BiotechBeauty® is always vegan and cruelty-free. So don’t let misinformation from social media fool you—synthetic ingredients are not harmful, and natural is not always better! BiotechBeauty® has done the work to cut out harmful ingredients and rigorously test our science-powered makeup. And we finally created products that HELP your skin, not harm it!
Clean beauty is here to stay and we’re here for it!
XO,
BiotechBeauty®