#goodvibesbeauty - ĀTHR Beauty Blog

Almost every cosmetic product contains some sort of palm oil or palm oil derivative. To grow palm oil, growers burn down forests to clear the land. Animals lose their homes, developers aggressively seize land from indigenous groups, and the fires give off huge amounts of greenhouse gases, formaldehyde, cyanide, and small particles that cause serious health conditions and many deaths.

Today we’re chatting about what makes beauty products safe (as in bacteria-free) – in both the clean and conventional world.

Keep reading for:

• What is Clean Beauty and how did it start?
• But is clean beauty a scam?
• The safety of clean beauty (and all beauty)
• Why preservation & how it works
• True or false: conventional beauty is preserved well and clean beauty isn't
• The types of preservatives & how we preserve our products

We get asked about mica a lot and we're so thankful that brands, consumers, and the industry are starting to ask these questions. Change can only begin when these issues are brought out of the darkness.

In this blog, we'll chat about:

• What Mica Is + How It's Used In Cosmetics
• Child Labor In Mica Mining
• Our Stance On Mica
• Natural Vs Synthetic Mica
• What You Can Do To Support This Issue

We use a combination of natural and synthetic mica. When we use natural mica, we source only from suppliers in the US or Malaysia. These areas have (and enforce) ethical labor standards which prevent the use of child labor. We avoid all mica from India or Madagascar where labor standards are unregulated and child labor is rampant.

Natural is good, synthetics are evil. Sound familiar? While we are all about non-toxic, organic, sustainable clean beauty, sometimes natural is not the best option.

Keep reading for:

• Synthetic vs Natural: What do these terms even mean?
• Does Natural = Non-Toxic?
• The Synthetics We Use & Why - Our Vetting Process.

With all the buzz around vegan cosmetics, it may seem like all your fave makeup items are probably vegan. Because really, what animal product could you possibly need in your eyeshadow? While it’s true, vegan options are growing (by 175% in the last 5 years according to GNPD), the truth is, animal by-products are still very common in cosmetics.

Keep reading for:

• The top 7 non-vegan ingredients you may find in your average eyeshadow, plus
• Vegan alternatives that serve the same purpose + what we use.
• How to tell if a product is vegan.
• Why companies are still using non-vegan ingredients.
• What you can do to help the cause.