When it comes to switching to safer products, one of the top questions I get is: how and where do I start? To which I say, I hear you. Thinking about all of the things that might need swapping – from personal care, to home cleaning, to cooking, to clothing and more – can feel completely overwhelming! I’ve been there – ready to make changes but overwhelmed by the process – and don’t want you to feel that way!
Which is why I’ve narrowed down my approach to be personal, simple, and strategic. There is so much information out there and research takes a lot of time (and energy). I’ve spent hours / days / weeks / years doing research, finding brands and trying products. And, while I will always encourage you to do yours and be your own advocate, I certainly don’t want you to re-invent the wheel when I’ve already done a lot of the work. That’s what friends are for, right? Sharing. Lending a helping hand. Lifting each other up. I am here to help you on this journey so just look to me as your guide and guru and we’ll do this together!
In this post I’ll outline some of the other main questions I get and my top tips for tackling the swapping process in a way that is both manageable and customized to your life.
Where do I start?
When it comes to transitioning to safer products, it’s always best to think in terms of space and frequency. So the larger areas (of your space and body) should go first! Think about where you spend the most time and what you use the most of in those areas. So for me, it’s at home and I spend the most time in the kitchen (cooking and cleaning) and the bathroom (showering and doing my skincare routine) so that’s where I started. If you spend a lot of time everywhere, just pick one area or room! Maybe you love to sleep and want to start with the bedroom. Or maybe you love to take baths. Maybe you’re a clean freak and spend a lot of time cleaning generally. Remember, there is no right answer, you just need to start somewhere and commit to it.
How do I start?
I am a big believer in slow swapping: using up what you have and replacing it when you need to. I find it to be the most manageable and budget friendly approach. Plus, it means you’re focusing on the things you are actually using a lot of (remember: frequency!). This approach can go hand in hand with picking a space, or you can simply replace as you go. Personally, I started with my cleaning products (traditional cleaners give me headaches – hello red flag) and then moved to body wash and lotion (something I use daily that covers the most surface area!). Here’s a list of places to consider if you need some help – you can also print it and use it throughout your journey as a checklist of sorts!
What ingredients should I avoid?
Okay, this is probably the most common question I get and the one with the longest answer. Let me start by saying it will take time to get familiar with the biggest offenders. And, while you don’t necessarily need to memorize them, it’s good to have a general idea. Stay tuned for a dedicated post on ingredients early next week and in the meantime, the good news is that there are tools to help you that already exist! More on that below.
How can I tell if a product is safe?
There is a multipart answer to this. 1) Don’t believe everything you read 2) Know your ingredients and 3) Utilize apps, brands and stores that do the research for you! So, first things first.
Don’t Believe Everything You Read
I always assumed I could walk into a store and grab something clean by reading the label – natural, green, organic – all signs of a good product right? Unfortunately, not so much. The personal care industry doesn’t make it easy for us to shop safer: regulations are outdated, labels are inconsistent and greenwashing is commonplace. There hasn’t been a law regulating the ingredients in personal care products since 1938. You heard me – that’s 80 years! As a result, claims like “organic,” “all natural,” and “no harmful chemicals” aren’t regulated by the government and companies can label and market products that contain known carcinogens and endocrine disruptors as they see fit with little to no consequences. It’s called greenwashing, and it’s very commonplace! The Cambridge Dictionary defines “to greenwash” as: to make people believe that your company is doing more to protect the environment than it really is. So, brands can make their products seem better for the environment and our bodies through labeling and unregulated terms when they aren’t actually implementing practices to ensure either.
Know Your Ingredients
You might be thinking okay okay wait – but if the ingredients aren’t banned they have to be safe, right? Wrong. Since 1938 the EU has banned close to 1400 chemicals and restricted levels of over 250 more. The US has only partially banned 30. The rest are innocent until proven guilty, and even then, the FDA doesn’t have much power when it comes to personal care products (more deets here). Which puts all the responsibility on us, the consumers. Is your head spinning? Mine too. But you can be an educated consumer, and here’s how: knowing your ingredients (more to come!) and utilizing apps, brands and stores that do the research for you. Let’s focus on that for a second.
Utilize Your Resources
There is no perfect app or reference for remembering all of the ingredients and products to avoid, but the two most popular apps are the Think Dirty App and the EWG Healthy Living App. Here’s a quick rundown of both, the pros and cons, and how you can utilize them:
Think Dirty App
This is a free app that verifies and vets ingredients and brands. The intentions are great, but the methodology is confusing and doesn’t factor in company policies and ingredient sourcing – brands that disclose ingredients are compared with brands that don’t. They also consider all preservatives unsafe, list allergenic ingredients as unsafe and don’t have a system for ingredients with impurities. Think Dirty lists any potentially contaminated ingredient as unsafe, instead of taking into account the companies that have certificates of purity and safety processes in place. Think Dirty was also purchased by P&G, so it’s hard to say how unbiased their reviews are. Overall I think their heart is in the right place – it’s a good thing to provide consumers with more information on their products! – but their methodology has too many holes for the results to be helpful.
EWG Healthy Living App
The EWG is a non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to protecting human health and the environment. Their app is free and it has ratings for more than 120,000 food and personal care products – you can scan a label or search by ingredient, product or brand, which is super cool! To get the rating, the EWG analyzes and rates individual ingredients according to their toxicity and then combines ingredient ratings for an overall product rating (more on that here). This is different than having a product that is EWG verified, which is an additional certification that requires brands to submit extensive data about their commitment to ingredient safety and transparency. More on that here. There are some limitations – namely that they may be missing some products – but for the most part this is where I’d start!
Where should I shop?
Here’s a scenario: you’re at Target and you realize you’re out of face wash. You think oh shit, I’m in a hurry and I need face wash and I have no idea if this is clean or not and my app isn’t working and I don’t understand what it’s saying eff it I’m just going to buy Cetaphil. We’ve all been there right? I KNOW I HAVE. First of all, put down the Cetaphil (more on that here). And second of all, I’ve learned that I can entirely avoid this very situation and be less psycho about label reading when I shop at stores that do the work for me. Yes, stores and brands like this exist and they are gamechangers. And guess what? You can shop all of them online, which is a must right now because, well, COVID. My favorite clean and safe brands are known for having extensive lists of ingredients that they avoid, conduct thorough vetting and approval processes when it comes to safety, sourcing and performance, and consider the entire product life cycle. Some great places to start are Beautycounter, Follain, Credo Beauty, Biossance, Young Living, Thrive Market and Grove Collaborative. Some are brands and some are stores that carry multiple clean and safe brands. I am confident that you can find almost everything you need from one of these places and if you can’t, there’s a great list of extensive brands here.
Whew! Now here’s your action step: write down where you’ll start (space) and/or identify products you’re running low on (frequency) then download the EWG Healthy Living app so we can start swapping those areas and products out!
Questions? Concerns? Need more specific guidance? Just shoot me an email at nora@purelynora.com or check out this page where you can submit a customized skincare and beauty questionniare. I’m here for ya!
Up next, the top ingredients to avoid and why. Missed the first post? Click here to for more about why I switched to safer in the first place!
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