Clean

We check for toxins and ingredient safety according to global industrial standards. These include the EU commission, Proposition 65 (OEHHA), California Safe Cosmetics Act, EWG, Safe cosmetics, ILO, Made Safe, The David Suzuki Foundation and many more able bodies and agencies that have extensive data on the toxicity of ingredients which are accepted globally as a scale of measure. Many ingredients used in cosmetic products come under the high to severe level of being toxic and are continued to be used due to poor regulatory laws world over. This means, that many toxic ingredients can cause serious problems such as cancer, liver toxicity, kidney damage, fertility disorders, skin allergies, asthma, poisoning, lung disease to name just a few.

Do you know an average woman ends up using almost 25 toxins on a daily basis in her routine to get ready.. ? these vary from products used right from oral hygiene to face washes, bath and body products, hair, makeup, deodorants, moisturisers, sunscreen, perfumes etc etc .. now multiply this x 30 days for a month and 365 for the year to gauge the possible extent of damage.

Do read our blog 'dirty dozen' to know all the possible dirty ingredients that are common place in most personal care brands, and why these are everyday toxins that you will find in 7 out of 10 products you use.

What is terribly sad today is the extent of green washing done by brands to lure consumers. Tags like "natural", "organic", "herbal" even "pure" and "clean" are loosely used on labels and websites without certifications and usually with a very small amount of so called clean ingredients.

zoobop checks brands across all skus to see if is really that clean. Ingredients are checked to assess the possible toxins used by a brand across its entire range of products. Certifications if claimed are checked with their Natural and Organic accreditors to see if these are current and upto date.

Further, to make reading labels easier, you can click any ingredient in the +know more window under synthetic derived ingredients, natural derived ingredients , and eco friendly icons of your brand read to understand in layman terms what the ingredient means, and what possible damage it can cause you.

We strongly believe that users will switch to clean ingredients once they know the potential harm some of the ingredients they use can do. Similarly the idea is also for brands to improve their ingredient content and strive to get better and improve their formulas.

Green

Being Green, as a brand is as important as being Clean. What this means is that we check all ingredients used by a brand to understand their environmental impact once they are released as waste in the soil or waterways.

As an example, an ingredient like nano -zinc oxide used in sunscreens, or microbeads used in many scrubs and facewashes may be low in human toxicity but is severely harmful to marine life, and has been banned in many countries (like Australia) due to the fact that are mistaken as food particles and ingested by marine life, blocking digestive tracts and damaging digestive system.

There are many such ingredients that are known eco polluters - Petrolatum, Sulphtes, Phthalates, Formaldehyde releasers, Parabens, Triclosan, nano ingredients, micro plastics and many more .. that we check your brand for.

Further more, we ask brands for transparecy in the supply chain of certain ingredients that are directly responsible for deforestation and are a leading cause for global warming. One such example is Palm oil or its derivatives used in many products. A brand can not call itself clean or even green if the palm oil it uses is not Responsibly sourced, and if they are not transparent with its supply chain. Most clean brands have replaced this cheap ingredient in their products..

We check for brand packaging standards, if plastics are used, we see their recycling polcies, grade of plastic used for disposal, possible PCR content if any and how the brand takes responsiblty in reducing their carbon footprint by using better more earth friendly packaging.

If a brand uses green energy and is carbon neutrol in its production facility that information is also given in our meter under the environment icon and improves the overall score of a brand.

We strongly urge our brands to use recycled boxes and zero plastics in packaging.

We encourage the use of hay and pine needles as buffer material for product packaging so that even that goes in the garden as mulch and not in the bin! There is no planet B people..

Honest

With poor regulatory laws and labelling practices, many brands choose not to list complete ingredients. Have you ever come across products that list only some key ingredients ..?
Have you ever wondered why?

Sometimes this can be due to packaging constraints, when an item is so small it is impossible to print everything on it. And this is acceptable, but only when the brand lists all ingredient used (of that product) on its website.

However, in our research, we have come across several brands that choose not to list complete ingredients on their products or their website. One clear reason for doing this is, that some brands choose to green wash their users into believing they are cleaner than they actually are. Many brands choose to list only a few ingredients on their website and products, these are usually green/ natural derived/ food based giving the average consumer a fake sense of goodness. On many websites you will see a list of a brand's NOs displayed proudly .. but whats actually inside their products will be labelled with only a few active or key ingredients.

For a zoobop verified brand , it is mandate to list all ingredients and show total transparency in its supply chain. As a consumer of a product I have the right to know what I use. Good or bad.. Should be my choice. Misinformation or no information is not acceptable to us.

Even a brand that uses questionable ingredients ( with toxic concerns) will get points on zoobop for being honest and by showing complete label transparency.

We mention label transparency in our meter for environment, synthetic, natural and animal derived ingredient concerns. Press the +know more tab for these icons to check details for your brand under all these criterias.

CRUELTY FREE

The unfortunate outcome is that like most hashtags used loosely these days, being cruelty free is just another logo commonly found on most products without any real brand commitment.

For zoobop verified brands, being cruelty free needs to be a strong commitment right from sourcing raw materials to production, and marketing. Getting certified CF is not feasble for most brands and that is understandable to us. But, having said that, it is important for a brand to be a 100% committed against animal testing to be considered CLEAN.

For us, Poor testing laws or no such policies mentioned can not make a clean brand.

In our research, we have found many brands that claim to be cruelty free but have no qualms in selling in Mainland China where testing on animals is mandatory by law on all personal care goods. It is however important to note, that both HK and Macau are currently exempted from this law (as of right now), which applies only to Mainland China. And brands can sell online to mainland China while being cruelty free, as long as they do not retail, export or have a ditribution network in place there, in which case the mandatory animal testing law comes in.

Further, brands claiming to be CF but sourcing from China for ingredients need to show a CF certificate from their supplier to us. As most ingredients sourced from China can not be guaranteed to be CF either.

zoobop found many brands using trademarked CF logos (inadvertantly) without being certifed by them. The most common logos wrongly used today are the PETA, Leaping bunny and the CCF logo which is mis-used widely, specially in India.

Certifications if claimed by brands are checked by us with their Cruelty Free accreditors to see if these are current and upto date.

Brands that have no policy and are vague about testing are marked as unclear or grey, till further data and clarity is obtained from the brand.

Zoobop does not allow certain animal derived ingredients which can be cruelly obtained to be sold on our platform, we consider these ingredients DIRTY. These are commonly used by most brands in skin care, make up and other cosmetic products- such as Skin, Hide, Bones, Civet, Shark oil, Liver oil, , Carmine ( crushed bettle juice used in lipsticks), and Tallow .. to name just a few.

Further, to make reading labels easier, you can click any ingredient in the +know more window under the Vegan icon Criteria (of your brand) to understand in layman terms which animal derived ingredient it is and if it can be unethically sourced.