1. Understand the Clean Beauty movement

While there is no clear definition of clean beauty, the two core elements are transparency and non-toxic ingredients.

• Transparency is essential because many products have long ingredient lists with some umbrella terms that can have undisclosed ingredients within, such as “perfume/fragrance” which could potentially contain a number of toxic/irritating ingredients.
• The second element is avoiding all known non-toxic ingredients that are linked to harmful health effect – this can range from hormone disruption and cancer to just skin irritation.

At Dr Jackson’s we take this a step further, for us clean beauty also means that we always favour well-researched natural ingredients whenever possible and would use synthetic ingredients if they are considered safe for consumers’ health as well as the environment, and where an equally good natural alternative isn’t available.

What clean beauty is trying to achieve is to make consumers more aware of what they are applying on their skin daily, and to be able to make informed choices. In an ideal world, all cosmetic products should be free of known toxic ingredients and well regulated, but unfortunately this is not the case, and it falls into the consumer’s responsibility to educate themselves and make the best choices for their health by learning how to distinguish toxic from non-toxic ingredients.

2. Avoid the “biggest offenders” – also known as the dirty dozen

• BHA (butylated hydroxyanisole) and BHT (butylated hydroxytoluene)
• Coal tar dyes
• Diethanolamine (DEA)
• Phtalates
• Formaldehyde
• Parabens
• Synthetic fragrance/Perfume
• PEG compounds
• Petrolatum
• Oxybenzone, Octinoxate
• Sodium laureth sulfate
• Triclosan

3. Go one step at a time

We understand that switching to clean beauty entirely can be very overwhelming, so if not sure where to start, we recommend making these swaps first:

• Firstly, replace the products you use the most (every day) such as face cleanser and moisturizer.
• Secondly, replace the products that are most likely to contain toxic ingredients such as body wash, shampoo and sunscreen.

4. Deciding to switch to clean beauty is the most important step and learning how to do so is the rest

Apart from getting familiar with dirty ingredient lists and avoiding products containing them, there is a number of helpful independent apps/websites with the sole purpose of making skincare, beauty, and household cleaning products health and safety information more easily available to an average consumer.

You can look up products and individual ingredients there and check for toxicity information. Some examples are EWG (Environmental Working Group), SkinDeep Database, Think Dirty App, The Good Face Project. These can help you to understand if the products you are currently using are safe and healthy.

• Shop at retailers that stock clean beauty brands. There are many retailers that carry only clean beauty brands that they have vetted against their strict standards making sure the products are free of toxic ingredients.
• Look for logos such as COSMOS Natural or Organic standard certification which guarantee environmentally friendly production and processing, respecting human health.