We never use any animal or synthetic materials. And we never, ever test our products on animals.
We use only dry standardized pharmaceutical grade plant extracts
This way we can reach extremely high concentrations of plant bio-actives (up to 100 times higher than the industry standard).
In the future, we will continue our constant search for the best new materials. All of these changes will be visible in the TOTAL TRANSPARENT™ section of our website.
The Problem(s) With Synthetic Materials
The majority of synthetic materials share a common flaw: contaminants and impurities. During the process of synthesizing a chemical, chemists add two or more substances, sometimes catalysts and enzymes, in exact quantities to form a new molecule. However, these processes are not 100% efficient and sometimes impurities form up to 20% of the product. For some molecules there are many synthesis steps to form the end product and, in each step, some of the reagents could remain. Also, there can be some very nasty stuff like dioxin, acids and oil derivates.
Each year thousands of new chemicals enter the market for food, cosmetics, and other applications. The majority have either very little or no research and data (at least not public) behind them regarding safety and almost no research about the interactions between different chemicals.
Under current legislation, chemical producers are not obliged to research chemical safety. If they do their research and get unfavorable results from their trials, they are not required to publish these results. All the burden for proving toxicity rests on government institutions. They have limited resources to do this task. In public, there is a growing consensus that the system needs to be reformed.
The situation is even worse in the USA. In the EU there is a list with over 1328 chemicals that are forbidden for use in skin care, perfumery, and cosmetics. Only 30 from this list are banned in the United States.
With globalization, however, yet another problem emerges. The supply chains for chemicals are globally spread and many times more difficult to control.
A significant number of low-quality materials are entering the market, and you actually have no way of knowing who the producer is, with generic materials sometimes used in place of the original. Generic materials usually have synthesis ways and so they contain different contaminants and impurities, which can influence products safety.
Natural Is Safer
So, for us, the only way to make skin care safe is to go organic and natural. All of our raw materials are certified, analyzed, and properly stored and processed.
They all came from plants. If possible, we use organic grade ingredients, but if they are not available, food grade at least.
The quality grades are:
Pharmaceutical grade
Food grade
Cosmetics grade
Industrial grade
When it comes to emulsifiers and preservatives, we use last generation plant-based minimal processed materials from reputed producers. They all are Natrue and Ecocert certified and allowed for use in certified natural skin care.