A few years ago, just the word “organic” on a beauty product would have caused a buying frenzy among the ecologically educated. The big O promised a healthier way of life, not to mention skin free of preservatives and pore-clogging parabens. It also hinted at more environmentally-sound practices.
Turns out organic was a term being used loosely. The organic, all-natural revolution spawned greenwashing, the marketing ploy that had many brands stamping the word “organic” or “organics” onto their shampoo or moisturizers just because it had about maybe three percent of fruit ingredients. Or they may have used ingredients grown organically but use packaging or production techniques that have a higher carbon impact on the environment than a jumbo jet transcontinental flight.
In 2003, California put into effect the California Organic Products Act (COPA), which “prohibits the retail sale of any cosmetic product labeled as ‘organic’ unless that product meets the criteria of 70 percent organic content.” Basically, it’s an act that helps swat away greenwashing BS and strengthens the efforts of real organic beauty brands such as Juice Beauty.
Juice Beauty was founded six years ago by Karen Behnke, an entrepreneur who spent 25 years building a multi-million-dollar business out of wellness and healthy living. At 40, Behnke who was then pregnant with her first child, realized, according to Alaina Thompson, global marketing manager for Juice Beauty, that she had spent all this time exercising and eating healthy but she had not thought too much about the products that she had been putting on her body. “Karen started looking up the ingredients she saw on her beauty products and was shocked at all the horrible things she was putting on her skin, such as the petroleum and the paraben.”
Behnke didn’t find anything she was comfortable with while pregnant so, making the most of her entrepreneurial background, she bought the name “Juice Beauty” and launched a company dedicated to bringing “organic, high-efficacy and pleasurable beauty solutions to people worldwide.” And when she said organic, she meant authentically organic.
S 100-percent certified organic fruit juice base, rather than the typical water base used by many other beauty brands that cannot be certified “organic or pesticide free.” This water base, even with the use of organic ingredients, dilutes the formula, wiping out efficacy and the whole point of going organic.
Juice Beauty combines over 100 USDA-certified organic powerful ingredients into a cohesive organic juice base, thus bringing the total organic content up to 98 percent in every product.
Says Thompson, “About 60 percent of what you put on your skin is absorbed into the bloodstream. So with our juices, you know that what goes into your body are full of vitamins and nutrients and not synthetic ingredients. (Our products) are so organic, you can eat them if you really wanted to.”
Apart from creating formulations made without parabens, petroleum, sodium lauryl sulfates, pesticides, phthalates, artificial dyes or synthetic fragrances (each product smells like a freshly-made smoothie), Juice Beauty strengthens their eco stand by only supporting organic farming, solar manufacturing, and the recycled paper business. The brand uses recycled and recyclable board for their cartons and recyclable bottles, as well as soya-based ink on their packaging paraphernalia.
One of the brand’s more enthusiastic patrons is Kate Hudson, Hollywood’s poster girl for sunshine, cheer and bohemian free-spiritedness. Thompson relates that when Hudson discovered Juice Beauty in one of their stores, she called up Karen Behnke and requested if the Juice Beauty’s “head juicer” can come to her house and look through her products. “She asked Karen what she should throw away and what she should get. It was also the same time she was dating Owen Wilson and later we saw him in one of our stores buying a whole shelf of our products.” Madonna, Amber Tamblyn and some of the Desparate Housewives are also Juice lovers.
It would be ideal if, like Kate Hudson, we can just ask an organic beauty and wellness expert to come to our house and help us choose which products to use on our body. But most of us just have to stringently read labels and practice consumer caution. It’s good to know that with Juice Beauty, at least, we know our health is sealed.
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Juice Beauty is exclusively available at all Beauty Bar stores nationwide.