Safe Vs Harmful Ingredients - How to read personal care labels?

Because of the good practice of avoiding foods having chemicals in their labels, we often see people being worried about clean soap ingredients with chemical names.

We must remember that in the language of chemistry, even water is called H2O! Every natural item is, by default, a chemical. Soap making is an art, which involves the art of chemistry i.e. the art of modifying the molecular structures of natural ingredients. (It’s a scientific way to say “cooking”!)

To help you make more informed choices, here’s a simple explanation of how to read your soap ingredients:

If you got only 2 minutes, this is all you need to know:
The good stuff is natural, minimally processed, nature derived, or natural minerals replicated in a lab . These are gentle on your skin and biodegradable. At Maauli, we use only these.
The bad stuff is either that which is non biodegradable or created in a way that harms the environment and/or our bodies (for ex. Parabens that harm our body are created from petroleum, which harms the planet.)

If you’d like to learn a little more, read on!

Natural ingredients are those that you pick from nature and use as it is. For example, Using a fresh aloe vera leaf gel on your skin.

Minimally Processed ingredients are those where the plant’s physical structure has changed but its chemical structure remains unchanged. A classic example is neem powder. In skin care, herbal bath powders are minimally processed options.

Let’s be clear!

If you want to choose products that are “as it is from nature”, you must choose from the above two categories alone. It’s like being on a raw food diet.

For more effective & convenient skin care, one can use absolutely clean, gentle and eco-friendly Nature Derived ingredients. It’s like having healthily cooked meals.

Nature Derived ingredients are obtained by processing the original raw material to access specific properties of it.

In chemistry, every cooked food is technically “nature derived”. Even pickles would come under this category as they undergo fermentation, which means there is a change in the chemical structure of the natural raw material.

In a sense, the household turmeric (haldi) powder is also nature derived. It undergoes a process of boiling the roots, drying and grinding to make it usable.😀

Mineral and inorganic ingredients are non-plant based substances which are found in nature. An example is salt.

Some minerals are replicated in a lab in the exact same way they get created in nature. For example, our daily salt is created in nature when sodium meets chlorine to form sodium chloride. The same process is replicated in a lab. Other examples are magnesium sulphate (epsom salt) and sulphuric acid (found in mineral springs) / potassium hydroxide (found in wood ash)

Also substances whose formation - like inorganic salts, acids and alkalis (e.g. sodium chloride, magnesium sulphate, sulphuric acid, potassium hydroxide solution…) - corresponds to the processes in nature.

The right question to ask…

Ingredients, whether natural or nature derived, can be biodegradable or non-biodegradable.

Biodegradable ingredients decompose and return back to nature. If an ingredient is biodegradable, relax and breathe easy. You’re making a clean, green choice for your skin and the planet.
For all our products at Maauli naturals, we use only such ingredients.

Some of our hero nature derived ingredients:

Sodium Cocoyl Isethionate (SCI) & Caprylyl/Capryl Glucoside - PH Balance

Non Biodegradable ingredients do not decompose easily. They stay on our planet, the way they are for a long time. Like plastic, such ingredients can lie (quite invisibly) in our lands and oceans for hundreds of years. Their microparticles can even stick to our own bodies for long periods!

Harmful ingredients are those which are created through processes that are harmful to the planet or are those that create harm in our bodies. Eg: Petrochemicals whose extraction creates excessive pollution and leaves the planet ruined or some cosmetics whose ingredients irritate and can penetrate human skin or cause internal harm.

Unnatural ingredients or Synthetics are those which are chemically and/or biotechnologically produced raw materials. These don’t occur in nature but are made entirely from scratch in a lab. (Fragrances are a classical example). Not all are harmful, but we don’t use any of these at Maauli Naturals. Our whole idea is to feel the love of mother nature in every self-care routine.

Examples of some nasty (harmful and/or unnatural) ingredients are:
SLS, SLES
Parabens
Silicones
Petrochemical products such as parabens, phenoxyethanol, paraffin oils and waxes
Products derived from genetically modified organisms (GMOs)

Questionable ingredients is a category we have created for ourselves at Maauli. These are skin-friendly, biodegradable ingredients but the way in which they are extracted from the planet cannot be verified as sustainable. For example, multani mitti and kaolin clay are widely used as “natural skin care” but are obtained by industrial mining. The negative impact of mining of these items may not be as widespread & hence not as harmful as mining of coal, steel or fossil fuels. But there isn’t much data available. In the longer term, we are committed to replacing such questionable ingredients with verified planet-friendly solutions.

So that’s all folks! Hope that helps.

As a final note, please know that for every ingredient we use and every product we offer at Maauli Naturals, you can be assured that our production & transformation processes respect both, the environment and human health.

Cosmetics is a really scary world, when you look at the kind of ingredients being used. We are doing our best to bring clean & green products to the world in whatever small way we can. We wish the idea of beauty would undergo change and people - especially women - wouldn't be under pressure to use harmful cosmetics.