Celebrate The Soil Association Organic Beauty Week and enjoy 15%off organic brands

Hi Lovelies,



Welcome back! And if you are new here, welcome 💕💕💕


So there is that wonderful time of the year where The Soil Association Organic Beauty and Wellbeing Week is happening on 15 - 21st May and I am so excited because it is happening!
If you happen to be in London, you can attend fabulous events and pop up shops in at Protein Studios, New Yard Inn, Shoreditch, London and meet the makers and movers and shakers or the organic beauty week, as well as panel discussions, workshops and talks from some of the very best in the organic beauty & wellbeing businesses. click here for more info. I must say I envy you if you can make it there. I want and must attend some myself some day! So curious and interested, you have no idea! While lots and lots of things are happening in the UK, here in Ireland I feel like a lone soldier in a field.

If you also happen to be not in London, fear not, we can also join in the fun in a way, I suggest signing a Soil Association petition to #comecleanaboutbeauty to stop greenwashing from happening, and also enjoy the discounts some brands or webshops will be offering. You can also follow SoilAssociationBeauty Instagram page here. Let's talk about these things separately and then I'll give you my two cents on how to spot truly natural product in between of misleading ones, ok?

photo credit @soilassociation

First of all I wanted to ask you to sign the Soil Association petition to stop greenwashing here (if you haven't already) - I feel it is about time things changed, because as we all know greenwashing is rife and unfortunately there is currently no legal check that products which say they are organic  or contain organic ingredients. This means that products can claim to be organic when they may only contain one or two organic ingredients. A product may claim to be natural with only a few natural ingredients in it, or even just a drop of essential oil. Worse still, they may contain ingredients which wouldn’t be permitted in a genuinely certified natural or organic product. Packaging can trick us by using words like “organic”, “eco”, “botanic”, “pure” and “natural”, whilst containing near to no ingredients to back up that claim. -loophole allows companies use anything under the sun, add less than 1% of organic ingredient and make big claims on the bottle. And the way the system works, these harmful ingredients have to be proven to be unsafe to be take off, and even then it is not the end off the story. The companies are not told but rather suggested to take harmful ingredients off, and even if they decide to do so, they have two year window to do so (can you believe this?!) so that is why you still see harmful and proven carcinogenic ingredients around. So I always say that before you even read the big claims on the front of the bottle, flip it and read the ingredients list. Soon you will be able to tell the difference. Look for ingredients you can understand (and pronounce) and whether they are first ingredients in the list (meaning they make the bulk or the base of the product) or are they waaay down the list, and the base is actually bunch of chemicals you can't recognize? Guess what? If you can't understand the ingredient, your body won't either.
We have all been mislead at one point or another, I know I've been there too - at the start of my green beauty journey I though TimoteiNaturals and Johnsons&Johnsons Natural were the real deal and those big chains finally started taking care about people's health. Oh boy how wrong I was! That was 8 or 10yrs ago, before I discovered The Soil Association and EWG, way way before ThinkDirty or any of those apps happened. So I had to educate myself the hard way, researching all the chemicals one by one, and let me tell you my head was spinning - you almost need doctor's degree to understand all this and my friends started joking that it is like a full time job for me. In a way it was, but thankfully we have come a long way since, and there's no need to go head first, there are plenty resources for you to choose from. Don't forget my blog among them - insert blushing emoji here!

So here are my two cents to avoid greenwashing:

💕 Look for the logo
Soil Association Organic is my most trusted body, as they have the most strictest criteria of them all, but there are many different ones, familiarize yourself with them. You may see "made with certified organic ingredients" written on a lot of products, but this is exactly the grey or greenwashing area i was talking about. Yes, the product may have certified organic ingredients indeed, but how much of it? That is why I love companies like Neals Yard Remedies, who clearly state a percentage of organic ingredients, and majority of them tend to be 75% and up, and yes, I will take that! 100%organic? Happy days, even better!

💕 Check ingredients, look for natural ingredients you can understand

💕 Get Think Dirty or similar app

💕 Check your products on EWG Skin Deep Database
But do take it with a grain of salt, the website is outdated by a couple of years at least, it does not have ratings for any of the new products, plus it tends to tar synthetic and natural ingredients with the same brush (fragrance for example, there's a huge difference in conventional "fragrance" which is up to 200 of synthetic chemicals and fragrance coming from natural essential oil, and yet EWG treats it the same. You can also make your own report by registering as a user and putting in the ingredients of the products you want to check - your search won't be visible to the masses, but you will get a peace of mind.

💕 And don't fret too much if you are just starting out, replace products one by one
(I remember being super stressed and overwhelmed and plain confused at the time of my own switch, and the way I did it, I went minimal with my body care, basically just DrBronner's soap and coconut oil for moisturising, and stopped using make up for a few years (partly because I was still in my twenties and sort of got away with it, partly because it was super hard to find and non appealing, try fifty shades of beige with terracotta mixed in. Thankfully now we have abundance of clean products to choose from, check out my post on where I shop and where I am on the green beauty spectrum here. Also, one more suggestion which you might find useful if you are just starting out (and surely will know about this if you are more or less advanced in the green beauty) - go to Instagram and search #greenbeauty and #greenbeautycommunity - I promise you, you will be in for a treat and might fall in into a rabbit hole of a green beauty everything for hours on end).

photo credit @LoveLula

And now the good news - let's talk about some discounts, shall we? I know I love discounts, and who doesn't, right? To celebrate the Organic Beauty week, Love Lula offers 15% off Soil Association certified organic products from 15th to 21st of May - you can find the list here - enter the code SA15. Enjoy!
If I will happen to know more fabulous discounts, I will make sure to to let you know, and for now, happy shopping!

Organic products I own - Neal's Yard Remedies, Skin & Tonic, Inika, DrAlkaitis, Zatik and more

Whoops, it looks like I might have enjoyed shopping a bit too much, huh? Here you can see the current selection of organic products I have, and that is not all of it, I forgot to include Organic Defence essential oil from NYR and I am sure a couple of more. Expect reviews of everything in the future, and if you have any questions on specific products you see here, feel free to ask away :) Thanks for reading and take care!

*Update: I'll list a few more awesome discounts and giveaways I know of, I found out about them following them on social media, since you know I am not there in person. So go on and enter the giveaways and browse the discounts!

#Better Food are running are running a competition to win a hamper full of organic goodies worth more than £200 on their FB page

#Content Beauty Wellbeing are running a competition too, sadly for UK only, enter via their Instagram page. If you can get to their store in person, you can also book their Pai 60min facial at a discount and also receive Instant Calm Beauty Heroes set. Sight, wish I could do that!

#Botanicals are giving away free "Try Me" pot on all orders placed on their website during this week.

#Nourish London are running a giveaway of 3 full size goodies on their Instagram page


Lots of Love,
Renata.
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Organic Beauty Week 2016

Hi Lovelies,

The Soil Association’s annual Organic Beauty Week (19 – 25 September) is happening, and I am so excited for it! Even though green beauty is coming mainstream, but it is not fast enough if you ask me, all of the beauty products should be natural and organic in my humble opinion. There are loads of things happening in the UK for the Organic Week and the Organic September, but sadly that does not translate to Ireland, a quick Google search coughed up the last organic beauty event happened here in 2013. How sad! Hopefully that will change real soon. Thankfully there are loads of discounts happening at various online shops to make up for it, so make sure to look around and take advantage of the deals while they are happening.

Organic beauty is booming with a lot of companies jumping on the bandwagon without necessarily being up to scratch. Unlike with organic food, there is no legislation governing organic beauty. A product can contain a teeny drop of just one organic ingredient and claim to be organic and get away with it! Urgh! Confusing? Yes, and the very reason the Soil Association has deemed this year's beauty week a call for clarity on ingredients. For us consumers there is an easy way to ensure you are getting an organic product and that is by checking the label. Look for a third party accreditation, a certification stamp from the Soil Association or one of the COSMOS partners. With this stamp you can be sure that an independent body has looked at the ingredients, their source and the manufacturing processes to preserve the values of what it means to be organic. When you see the Soil Association logo on a beauty product it means that you can trust that you’re buying a top notch  organic product that has undergone stringent testing to ensure it is what it claims to be. They have your back!

I should also mention that Soil Association has partnered with You magazine to create special organic beauty box featuring lots of goodies from leading organic beauty brands such as Neal’s Yard Remedies, Skin+Tonic, Botanicals, Terre Verdi and more, so make sure to check it out! I will include the link here. And did I mention that the box is only 20£? The Botanicals face serum alone would cost you 30£, and they included full size of it! Fab or what?

more info also here.

So, what that means to me? Well, for a start I just realised I need to up my organic game myself! Even though I have a vast array or natural products, I need to choose more organic products, and that is what I will focus on in the future. Botanicals and Terra Verdi, I am looking at you!
Here's a helpful link for you (and for me) to truly know what brands are certified organic by Soil Association:
https://www.soilassociation.org/organic-living/health-beauty-textiles/health-beauty/our-certified-brands/

Hope you find this post helpful and please check out my fave organic products posts:

Neal's Yard Remedies overview - my favourite organic company!
Neal's Yard Remedies Wild Rose Beauty Balm
Dermorganic Shampoo (70% organic)
Zuii Organic Melon blush

This is my latest haul from Neals Yard Remedies, and of course I will review everything too.

Neals Yard Remedies goodies

I will be coming at you with Inika products review, and those beauties are certified organic! I also have loads of products reviews who have a high percentage of organic ingredients, so please feel free to peruse my blog, thanks!


*Update a couple of weeks later:
This is what I acquired in the short space of time after posting this blog post, I wanted to share my improved organic game with all of you!
And my stash of organic teas can bee seen here, although it might be in various stages of depletion :)

Stay tuned for lots of exciting reviews to come!

Boody, organic bamboo activewear, how exciting is that?

So that is all for now,
Lots of Love,
Renata.