Organic Certified Skin Care

Organic skin care and organic personal care is not legally regulated in the same way as organic food and drink. Skincare and toiletries can be called organic and natural, even if they contain a tiny percentage of organically grown ingredients. The only way to be sure that the product you are using is genuinely organic is to use products that are certified organic by an independent organic body.

Organic skincare certified according to Soil Association organic standards which are among the strictest in the world for organic beauty products can be confidently used. Few companies have achieved this organic skin care certification.

The Soil Association's organic standards are that beauty products should be ethical, chemical-free and as organic as possible. In particular, the Soil Association ensures that any products carrying its logo not only use organically grown ingredients where available, but also do not contain the toxic and harmful chemical substances that we are strongly against.

To obtain organic certification for a product, a minimum of 95% of all ingredients must be certified organic. Where insufficient organically grown ingredients exist, the Soil Association will approve products that contain at least 70% organic ingredients but they cannot be labelled "organic". The remaining ingredients, however, are also bound by strict guidelines. Substances suspected of being toxic to humans or the environment are not allowed, neither are genetically modified ingredients.

To be accepted by the Soil Association, suppliers' certificates must either be issued by the Soil Association or by a body that the Soil Association recognises as equally rigorous in its testing and certification.

Soil Association requires declarations from every supplier of a non-organic ingredient (where organic is not available) to prove that it is GM free.

There can be a huge gap in purity and organic content between a product that claims to have natural or "certified organic ingredients", and one that bears the Soil Association logo indicating the whole product has been independently certified as having a certain organic content and being free from suspect substances.