Early this year, the Global Cosmetic Industry (GCI) published an article entitled “Beauty Cleans Up”, discussing how consumers are yearning for more natural ingredients, transparency from brands, and sustainability. As a brand, we strive to listen to these collective voices to thoughtfully design and formulate all of our serums.
To summarize the article, we understand that consumers are looking for:
- Sustainable ingredients in natural products,
- Environmentally conscious businesses,
- Products that are thoughtfully designed to have the least possible impact on human health, the environment and society without sacrificing quality,
- More transparency regarding how products are made, safety, animal testing standards, ingredient sourcing and environmental impact, and
- Verified science behind product claims.
Among retailers, brands and consumers, there are four primary areas to ensure clean beauty standards:
How does sk.in strive to meet these criteria in our formulations? Read further for a breakdown on how we’ve considered these four values in our brand.
Safety
According to the GCI, ingredient safety is considered the main driving force for clean beauty. For some consumers, there is a drive to primarily use natural or organic ingredients, for others the focus is ethically derived synthetic ingredients. And then there are those who are looking for a combination of the two.
When it came to product formulation and safety, our main focus has always been to only use ingredients that: minimise the chance of skin reactions; are ethically sourced; are not animal derived and are never tested on animals. Our second main factor in choosing ingredients was the availability of independent clinical studies that demonstrated effectiveness of ingredients.
We have taken this approach with all of the ingredients used in sk.in products. One of the many ingredients that follow this important criterion is Polysilicone-11 from Grant Industries. This ingredient achieves a high functionality on the skin, its cleanliness in manufacture, and its certification to be vegan friendly, GMO and palm free.
Sustainability
Sustainability is a term that encompasses not only the ingredients used but the packaging of each product. It’s imperative to focus on every element: bottles, boxes, delivery, wrapping paper, cards, etc. Every part of the product can be carefully chosen to meet a clean beauty approach.
Wherever possible, sk.in has made conscious decisions to use materials that meet more sustainable standards, such as fully recyclable polyethylene terephthalate (PET) for our sk.in serum bottles, glass bottles for all professional ranges and lines, and non-toxic, biodegradable, and recyclable polyethylene (PE) flexible film for our protective packaging. We also carefully procure to the fullest extent, printers that source their paper from Responsible Forest millers and that use the latest technology in protective packaging.
Ethics
As a company, we believe no animal testing should be involved with any of our products or ingredients. When we started formulating our products, we began by ensuring that all ingredients were sourced from responsible manufacturers. Once the formulations had been compounded, every new product was tested internally on staff, friends, and family, monitoring for any skin reactions using VISIA technology to ensure accuracy. Once the formulations passed these tests, we then completed our own internal studies on volunteers using the VISIA skin analysis to document changes and improvement in results. Only once we were satisfied with these results did we venture to fill and produce the new product line.
As part of our ethical platform, Skin Ingredients (sk.in) makes a concerted effort to support local environmental groups. We contribute a portion of all sales to Greenpop (read more about our partnership here) while also offering you the ability to choose to contribute further at checkout.
Transparency
Every element of clean beauty presented by a brand can only be verified by a company’s transparency. By asking questions about what the brand represents, every effort must be taken to explain how we take action, what goes into every bottle and how it gets there. When approaching this subject, we believe in discussing safety, sustainability and ethics as much as possible.
Hard questions for any brand to face:
When further discovering the values in brands that you love, the questions you should be asking are:
- How do they approach safety, sustainability, and what are their ethics?
- Are they transparent to a point that they can own up to their mistakes?
- Do they publicly display their entire ingredient list – active and inactive?
- Do they actively contribute to the environment?
- What are their sustainability policies?
As a brand, we strive to contribute to the health of the environment as much as possible and to consistently contribute to socially and ethically responsible organisations. Our drive is to maintain a vegan friendly product, free of unwanted preservatives and perfumes, never tested on animals, 100% cruelty free, aware of our environment, with a value for sustainability and to be transparent with all of our decisions, ingredients, packaging, and customer interactions.
We believe that together, small changes will make a substantial difference to our environment and the planet we inhabit.
From the dr. you trust,
Dr Alek
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