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Vegan Essentials: Finding Nontoxic Vegan Cosmetics

We have covered a lot of ground recently on veganism and raw food.  As I have found out, committing to a vegan diet is no small thing.  For me, baby steps toward that direction is more manageable that a bigger shift.  Do any of you feel the same?  Or are you more all or nothing on the diet/food front?

Whichever category you fall under, there is one type of vegan essentials that don’t require as enormous a shift, and that is with cosmetics.  Did you know that you can purchase vegan, nontoxic cosmetics?  Yep, you can!

So what makes a cosmetic vegan?  The same things that make a food product vegan: no animal ingredients or animal by-products.

The American Vegetarian Association (AVA) and The Vegan Society are two certifiers of vegan cosmetics and personal care products.  The AVA CERTIFIED logo designates products as either VEGETARIAN (may include eggs or dairy) or VEGAN (includes no animal by-products).  The UK-based Vegan Society approves cosmetics as vegan with their sunflower logo and is a good resource for all things vegan.

Some of my favorite cosmetic lines make vegan products. Just remember that just because it’s vegan doesn’t mean it’s natural. It’s important to look at ingredients, but starting your vegan cosmetics shopping at a natural beauty retailer or seeing if natural brands you trust have a vegan line are good ways to take out some of the guesswork. Shop Love True Natural and The Nature of Beauty for a wide selection of vegan products from safe, nontoxic beauty brands.  Soapwalla (maker of the best natural deodorant ever!) and Scotch Naturals nail polishes are also vegan.

{image of organic cosmetics via Shutterstock}

Written by Liz Thompson

I am an organic beauty expert, writer, and mom of two young environmentalists who can already spot a toxic product when they see one. Read more about me at Organic Beauty Source.com, and find me on , Twitter, Pinterest, and Facebook.

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