Continuing on with my series on my favorite natural and cruelty free products! You can find part one here and part two on hair care, body and other products here.
Face Care
I’m pretty picky about stuff that goes on my face. If you’re less high maintenance than me, then try Green Beaver’s line. There is a fabulous, little known company out of Quebec that I adore. I’ve been using Simply Natural Kosmetics for a long time now and I love all their products. I use their cleansing milk, blemish formula cream, clay mask and facial scrub. All the products are hand made in Quebec with organic ingredients and come in reusable glass jars. I love that I can actually pronounce everything on the super short ingredient list. You can find Simply Natural products at health food stores around Ottawa. I’m not sure how widely available their products are outside of Ottawa but you can order online from their website.
The other face care company that I have recently fallen in love with is Juice Beauty. I only discovered them a few months ago when looking for a natural daily moisturizer with SPF. I’ve been using their Green Apple SPF 15 Moisturizer and it is amazing!! There stuff is hard to find and it’s not cheap, but trust me, it’s worth it! As far as I can tell there is only one store in Ontario that sells Juice Beauty products – Pink Ginger in Merrickville (they also have an online store).
Cosmetics
Green-washing in the cosmetics industry is huge. Many of the major brands have added lines with ‘natural’, ‘green’ and ‘plant essence’ in the name but, sadly, most of these products are just as bad offenders as everything else at the drug store. If you are trying to find some decent cruelty free cosmetics at the mall and can’t be bothered to head to a health food store or order online, your best bets are MAC and Aveda. Neither company tests on animals, but both of these companies still use a lot of ingredients that are unsafe. Vegans need to be careful because some of their products still contain animal based ingredients. Aveda may be a tiny bit better but they still use a lot of bad ingredients (even though they pretend like they don’t).
If you want to go all the way there really are some great products out there. I’m still experimenting but so far I’ve had great luck with Colour Caramel, Gabriel Cosmetics and ZuZu Luxe. The best place to find these products is at your local health food store or by ordering online. For those living in Ottawa, Market Organics recently expanded their cosmetics section and they now have a much larger selection.