Clean wellness, health, beauty, and just general living have been all the craze in recent years. The surge in the consumers looking for products free of toxic and harmful ingredients, in addition to supporting brands with practices geared towards sustainability and social responsibility, have led to a whole new market based on transparency and accountability.
You can call it the “Goop” effect but more likely the trend is coming from more research with ingredients, testing, sourcing, and supply-chain, in tandem with the 21st Century consumer need for information. And clean living now extends to all facets of life from a beauty routine to diet and even fashion and other consumer products. We want things that will do us good, do the planet good, and do other people good as well.
From historian and beauty expert Vivian Kelly, “A great beauty brand used to be one that could give you good coverage, easy application, and saturated pigments. It goes a lot deeper than that now. A great brand must also have great research, be able to add protection for the wearer’s skin, and sometimes also be doing good or at least not harming the environment. I think customers are looking for a more holistic experience with beauty and wellness.” Brands like Brooklyn based Shaun Leon, who has been known for creating bath and body products using only natural ingredients, has gone a step further and is now offering her top-selling Softest Ever Body Butter in an unscented version. Beauty brands are leaning towards purity now.
With health and wellness, there has been a lot of interest around CBD and the research is proving promising on the benefits of these products for a healthy lifestyle. One of the most popular brands on store shelves is Sky Wellness and their collection is completely free of THC, GMO’s, pesticides, gluten and is also vegan. For complete transparency, the brand shares all third-party testing results of each product they sell directly on their website. You can see the clean lab results for THC, residual solvents, heavy metals, and many others. Sky Wellness also has both topicals and ingestibles to make for easy consumption of CBD.
For consumers interested in taking clean living to the next level, there are also many fashion brands participating in this great lifestyle trend. Brands are using more organic materials, providing more transparency with sourcing, and making a more concerted effort to do less harm. New York based loungewear brand Hue Division is not only doing all of these things, but they’re also trying to work “off calendar” in order to provide consumers with the product in a more time appropriate way and to eliminate any wasteful over-production. The brand also prides itself on being 100% plastic free – from materials to hangtags and even the tape that is used to ship packages, Hue Division uses zero plastic throughout their entire supply chain. Clean living is not just about keeping toxins out of our bodies, it also includes keeping them out of our environment.
One person taking on this task is Marisa Butler, Miss Earth USA 2021, who practices clean living for herself and her community. “Our bodies are physical representations of our philosophies and habits. As an Earth Advocate, this includes practicing clean wellness in both my skincare and beauty routines, but also in my other daily activities and through my organization, We Clean Trails. Every weekend, our team of incredible volunteers gathers between 400-700lbs of trash from public spaces in the San Diego area. We want to care for and clean our parks, canyons, walking trails, and beaches, in order to make them more accessible and enjoyable for all,” says Butler. The eco-beauty queen also works as a financial advisor specializing in ESG (environmental social governance) portfolios, and helps clients with investments that are financially and environmentally sound.
Clean living has truly evolved and can now be practiced in many aspects of our lives from personal to professional. It’s great to see so many advocates from both consumers and businesses supporting a healthy life for all including our planet. We look forward to seeing this movement grow and to see more transparency in all the markets.
