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I was talking to my friend Lisa Tristram, who knows more about the state of the Australian Organic skin care industry than anyone I know – and that is saying something! If you have a question, she has the answer – of course I have lots of questions! Lisa has worked in all areas of the skin care industry from the shop floor to formulating to dealing with issues of organic regulation.

Our discussion centered around the topic of “truth in beauty” and we both rued a. the lack of good regulation in the skincare industry and b. the out and out greenwashing that is so common. I think for the consumer, the toughest thing is knowing how to discern between the truth about product claims and what the the marketing says is true. Unfortunately there is often a big gap between them. I have put an article below that Lisa wrote for the Jasmin Skin Care blog. While I have written on this topic before, Lisa is at the coalface of the recent changes in the Australian industry and offers some insight:

If you don’t mean it don’t green it

Author: Lisa Tristram for Jasmin Skincare

Something we get asked about constantly is organic certification – what it means? who really has it? how can you tell? what do the different levels of certification mean? And in an industry awash with “greenwashing” how do I know what is really green and organic??

There is a lot of confusion out there and one of the main reasons for this is the lack of industry standards and regulations that apply consistently to everyone. For example in Australia we have SEVEN organic certifying bodies! I mean come

Organic Food Chain - one of Australia's 7 organic certifiers

on how hard is that to regulate ! let alone all the other countries different regulations and standards. AQIS ( Australian Quarantine and Inspection services) govern all the certifying bodies to keep them all in line with overall regulations governing food, agriculture, importation and exportation. But we have never had an Australian standard for certified organic for either food or cosmetics/skincare.

Now things are changing and an Australian Draft standard has been drawn up over the last year, co-authored by many of the larger players in the industry. Many companies such as ours (Jasmin Skincare), who were already doing everything organically, were asked to contribute to the draft to ensure that a standard was accessible across the board and truly defined the terms that go with acheiving certified organic status for skincare. The Standard is expected to be published towards the end of the year and will effectively be policed by the ACCC , in as much as consumers will be able to report companies that seem to be greenwashing or using the term “organic” without reason.

A number of companies have been caught out in the past year greenwashing their products and this has caused quite a stir in the industry. Check out these articles http://www.cosmeticsdesign-europe.com/Products-Markets/Australian-authorities-take-action-over-organic-mislabelling and  http://www.cosmeticsdesign-europe.com/Products-Markets/Cosmetics-awash-with-greenwashing-says-report

Which brings us to what is happening overseas with all the press caused by Dr Bronner (a certified organic soap company with very high ethics) suing a number of companies for using the term “organic” either in marketing or branding without following through on this claim in their products. The whole point being that Dr Bronner felt that a company that has put the hard yards into going organic should be able to use that claim without the fear that someone else is using it fraudulently.

Dr Bronner - creator of Magic Soap

This led to a huge shake up, many claiming  it had been long overdue in the US Organic industry. The NSF created a National Standard which was adopted late last year in conjunction with NOP (the US National Organic program) which covered standards for those products that are claiming to be “made with certified organic ingredients”. It states that there must be a minimum of 70% overall certified organic ingredients in any skincare product that claims to be organic which has certainly paved the way for more industry regulation. The USDA in the US is still the main certifying body for products claiming 95-100% certified organic ingredients and is becoming a widely recognised logo globally for this.

Note from Ananda: it is my hope that not only “organic” status is defined in the upcoming Australian draft standard but that like Europe, they also define “natural”. There is a lot of confusion about the difference between the two. I will address this issue very soon.

Related Articles:

Green is the new Black – a critical look at “greenwashing”

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