What does “natural” and “organic” mean on cosmetics labels?
Nowhere do the terms “natural” or “organic” take more of a bruising than the cosmetics industry! You and I probably think of the term “organic” to mean grown and cultivated without the use of chemicals. That would be the conclusion most cosmetics companies would like us to make when we see the term on a cosmetics label. Most cosmetics companies utilising the term “organic” on their label are using the chemistry definition of organic – meaning a compound that contains carbon. Carbon is found in anything that has ever lived. So, by using this definition of organic we could say that a toxic petrochemical preservative called methyl paraben is “organic” because it was formed by leaves that rotted over thousands of years to become oil, which was used to make this chemical preservative. Now if we look at the term “natural” we probably define it as “existing in, or formed by nature; not artificial”. However, the trend today is to see long lists of chemical names, followed by phrases such as “d
