Organic

What Organic Means To Me

In my opinion it's just become too easy to be cleared USDA Certified Organic as a skincare product. For starters it's difficult to know exactly is meant by the term organic. Organic where skincare is involved simply implies the ingredients are grown without the involvement of pesticides, artificial fertilizers, and any other synthetic ingredient. So the given case that a farm that is USDA ORGANIC" but its surrounded by hundreds of miles of farm land using artificial fertilizers and toxic pesticides :: well the subject farm can still call their crops organic. Without consideration that they share the same water and air as their poluting neighbors and should not be given USDA Approval. We would not consider using products from any farm cultivating on compromised land.

So what's the solution to all of this? Simple, the solution is to care less about labels and more about where the crops are grown and to the farming practices of neighboring farm land. Frankly, I prefer ingredients that are labeled Wild Crafted because these are from farmers who think like me that the USDA label is less important than ethical farming practices. And they keep it clean.

But regardless of the certification of the ingredient, we make sure we know the sources of what we are using in our skincare products. And the bottom line is if it's not clean, if it's not from farm land that's clean or if it's in anyway cultivated to the detrement of the enviornment we simply don't use it in our products.

Synthetics Versus Organic And When To Worry

There are good synthetics and harmful synthetics. There are good organics and harmful organics. For something to be organic it must be a carbon based something. For instance water is not organic because it is made with two hydrogen atoms and an oxigen atom :: no carbon so it's not organic. And water is good for you! Some organic ingredients are from s organic chemestry lab and since they are formulated using a carbon molecule they would be considered organic, but an organic that is not from nature. They might be harmful and they might be harmless.

This just goes round and round and round. So how do you know what's good and not good for your body and your skin. As a rule of thumb the ingredients on the label should be things you recognize and mostly could eat if you wished. So be a label reader and if there's something there you don't recognize do some research and find out what it is. 

If for any reason a company declines to discuss it's ingredients that would be a flag to be careful and do a little research.

Cheers. Kim Emanuel, Owner Luminance Skincare