The post Terre Verdi unwraps travel sizes, gift sets for Christmas appeared first on Natural Beauty Yearbook.

Ethical and organic brand skincare Terre Verdi has introduced new travel sizes of four of its products and created two new gift sets in time for Christmas.

The brand’s FranChouliPom Body Oil, Yoga&Sports Body Oil, Acqua di Rosa Balancing Mist and GoodOils Cleansing Oil are now all available in 30ml travel sizes.

Terre Verdi’s Organic Gift Set for Body contains FranChouliPom Body Oil and Yoga&Sports Body Oil (both 30ml), together with its versatile cold-pressed Marocco Argan Oil (50ml) which can be used on skin, nails and hair.

The Organic Gift Set for Face includes travel sizes of Terre Verdi GoodOils Cleansing Oil and AcquaDiRosa Balancing Mist, along with the FranChouliPom Facial Serum, suitable for dry or mature skin.

All Terre Verdi products are certified organic with Soil Association COSMOS, cruelty-free and vegan.

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The post Living Nature’s loving the lips appeared first on Natural Beauty Yearbook.

Botanical Brands has extended the Living Nature certified organic lipstick range with the addition of two new vibrant shades of red.

Wild Fire is described as a versatile warm and classic matte red with an orange undertone, which can be worn day or night. Pure Passion is a rich, deep matte red with a subtle crimson undertone. Perfect for night time it is designed to add a bit of glamour and elegance.

Successfully creating a red lipstick from organic, 100% natural and carmine-free ingredients is no easy task, according to Botanical Brands’ Kim Allan. “A good red lipstick is a difficult colour to create from 100% natural and organic ingredients. To get the vibrancy of colour without using carmine is even more difficult. After years of working on this dilemma, Living Nature’s formulators have now succeeded. They have created two intense, vibrant red lipsticks that use really clever natural plant ingredients, including Melia azadirachta and Coccinia indica.   As an added bonus they are also certified organic by COSMOS.”

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The post Organic health and beauty market flourishing says new SA report appeared first on Natural Beauty Yearbook.

UK sales of certified health and beauty products rose by 21.6% in 2015 to reach a value of £54.2 million, according to figures from the latest Soil Association Organic Market Report 2016, released today.

The report says that Soil Association Certification now has 214 licenced health and beauty symbol holders and that brands are recognizing the need for reliable guarantees and assurances about the ingredients products contain and the processes involved in producing them.

Organic Monitor figures show that 43% of consumers look for a certification symbol when they buy a natural or organic personal care product.

Clare McDermott, business development director, Soil Association, said: “The organic beauty market is flourishing with increased sales, product launches, availability and greater consumer engagement within the sector. It has relaunched itself as a credible and aspirational alternative to mainstream non-organic beauty and has outperformed expectations this year. Organic beauty continues to thrive and the next 12 months look to be even stronger.”

The report highlighted five key trends:

• New regulations are creating a benchmark standard for the industry. Over a quarter of the 214 Soil Association Certification licensees are now certified to the Cosmetics Organic Standard (COSMOS) which will become the SA’s core standard for beauty on 1 January 2017.

• Demand for organic ingredients is growing as more organic brands are creating new products.

• More companies are scaling up what they do. Not only are established beauty companies performing well, but newer companies such as Pai Skincare, which saw sales up by over 60% in 2015, are growing too.

• The sector is becoming more diverse and innovative, with clinical data to back up their efficacy. According to Planet Organic, organic make-up and cosmetics are seeing strong growth.

• Consumers are becoming more informed and educated about the benefits of organic beauty. According to figures from Organic Monitor, 31% of consumers first decided to buy a natural or organic beauty products because of increased awareness. The Soil Association says that this is thanks to better branding and marketing campaigns including its Organic Beauty Week. “Our Campaign for Clarity is raising awareness of the fake and misleading organic claims that are being made in the beauty industry,” the report says.

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The post Nordic natural cosmetics sector experiences healthy growth appeared first on Natural Beauty Yearbook.

A new study by Organic Monitor has revealed that sales of organic and natural beauty products doubled between 2008 to 2014 in the Nordic region, and predicts that sales revenues will climb to €200 million in the coming years.

The largest market for natural cosmetics in the region is Denmark, where they comprise 4% of total sales of cosmetic and personal care products. One of the factors driving the market, says the report, is availability in a broader range of outlets, although health food stores still have the highest share of sales.

Organic Monitor also found that although imported brands are well established, Nordic brands are gaining market share, with Danish company Urtekram – which was the first brand to launch Cosmos-certified organic cosmetics in the region – being the market leader.

And certification is becoming increasingly important in the region, with consumers wanting the reassurance of ethical/environmental logos and symbols. The Nordic Swan is the most dominant symbol, recognized by more than 90% of consumers.

Natural Products Scandinavia, the Nordic trade show for natural health, nutrition, beauty and self care, takes place on 1-2 November 2015 in Malmö, Sweden.

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The post Beauty Bites appeared first on Natural Beauty Yearbook.

Australian make-up brand Eye of Horus has launched the Brow Define to add shape, colour and definition to eyebrows. On one end of the pencil is a twist-up nib that deposits the wax-based product; the other end has a handy brush that helps you blend the colour. Enriched with castor oil, it is available in three shades.

MyChelle has added an Advanced Argan Oil to its range, incorporating the super nutrient baobab along with vitamin E to minimize fine lines and wrinkles. The product is USDA-certified organic.

Green Tea is the new variety of Hurraw! Lip Balm to hit the shelves in the UK. Combining Canadian-grown cold-pressed hemp oil with matcha green tea powder and a hint of jasmine the moisturizing balm in rich in omega fatty acids and antioxidants.

Natural hair dye brand Herbatint has reformulated and extended its gel colour collection and added three new herbal plant extracts – cinchona, walnut and rhubarb – to the formulas.

New to the UK comes the What Skin Needs functional skincare range which uses Plantolin, derived from Centipeda cunninghamii, a plant indigenous to Australia which is revered by the Aboriginal people for its soothing and healing properties.

Danish organic beauty company Urtekram has upgraded its bodycare range to meet the new COSMOS standard which will come into force after 31 December 2016.

The Nadebella Swiss skincare range, which uses a secret recipe passed down through the generations, is now available in the UK. All the products are handmade in small batches using only natural ingredients.

London brand 001 Skincare has added two new Asian-inspired products to its offer: Silk Skin Mask Sheets provide a DIY face mask using the company’s 2ndSKN technology; and Rosa Damascena Essence Mist is a versatile moisturizing mist to refresh the face, body and hair.

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The post Botanicals enhances formulations to meet COSMOS standards appeared first on Natural Beauty Yearbook.

Award-winning natural and organic skincare company Botanicals has enhanced its products to conform with the new European Organic Standard COSMOS.

COSMOS will come into effect after 31 December 2016 and bring together several European standards – BDIH (Germany), Cosmebio (France), Ecocert Greenlife (France), ICEA (Italy) and Soil Association (UK) – to form one internationally recognized standard.

Botanicals has now excluded the preservative phenoxyethanol in all its lotion-based products and used a higher percentage of organic ingredients to come into line with the new criteria, as well as improving the texture of its balms and cleansing melts for better absorption.

Company founder Wendy Stirling comments: “Sadly, current legislation allows the term ‘organic’ to be mis-used by companies that only include tiny amounts of organic ingredients in their formulations. The only way retailers and consumers can differentiate is to look for an organic certification symbol on the packaging.”

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The post ‘Honest beauty’ from zk’in appeared first on Natural Beauty Yearbook.

Debuting in the UK today (8 September) – the first day of Organic Beauty Week – is zk’in, an Australian-born organic skincare brand aiming to address rising consumer expectations of what effective skincare should deliver.

The 12 COSMOS-certified products cover every skin concern and life stage and feature a unique 100% natural preservative system – a synergistic blend of bitter orange, radish root, vitamin E, essential oil isolates, basil extract – which earned the company an R&D grant from the Australian Government for contributing new knowledge to Australian science.

Zk’in is designed to prove that certified organic ingredients and scientific skincare need not be mutually exclusive.

Brand founder and CEO, Grace Culhaci, who says she wanted to develop a range that negated the need for needles, toxins and synthetics but is also results-based, explains: “Consumers have become disillusioned by over-exaggerated claims and imagery, whilst also becoming more ingredient-savvy. Many conscious consumers are looking for purity, but not at the sacrifice of performance and efficacy.”

The range incorporates individual products for different skin types including cleansers, moisturizers, hydrating mists, toner and rebalancing lotion, as well as treatments such as Clarifying Exfoliator, Line Smoothing Serum and Brightening & Hydrating Masque. The skincare formulations use certified organic actives including brown seaweed extract (Maritech Reverse), cotton thistle extract (Gatuline Skin Repair BVio), EPS seamat, quillaja bark and paracress extract (Gatuline Expression).

“The central tenet of zk’in is ‘honest beauty’,” explains Culhaci, “For us this means a zero tolerance policy to unnatural ingredients, unsustainable business practices, animal cruelty, and unrealistic Photoshopping.”

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The post Certifiably organic appeared first on Natural Beauty Yearbook.

Walk into any department store in Europe and you’ll find yourself assaulted on all fronts by a dizzying array of cosmetic counters, a thick fog of chemically enhanced fragrance and over-zealous, commission-paid reps wearing painted-on Cheshire cat grins.

It’s enough to make you feel like you’ve fallen down the rabbit hole and wound up in Alice’s not-so-Wonderland, especially when you throw in the price tag, ingredients and carbon footprint of some of the products on display.

So why not make a small change this year, and in exchange for being as mad as a March hare, try being as certified as a September bee?

That’s the aim of Organic Beauty Week, to create a buzz around its ‘Small Change, Big Difference’ campaign.

Taking place on 8-14 September it’s a celebration of organic beauty as a whole, with a spotlight on Soil Association certified brands.

Seeking to raise awareness of the many benefits associated with using organic beauty products, it also ties into the wider Organic September festival run by the Soil Association, which champions all aspects of organic living, from farming, food and drink, through to beauty, textiles and fashion.

Myriad events, promotions and partnerships are planned by a host of credible organic pioneers — both brands and retailers — but when it comes to communicating eveything that certification has to offer, it’s fair to say they’ve got their work cut out.

Organic health and beauty sales may have increased by 17 per cent last year, but there is still no legal regulatory body monitoring organic beauty. The COSMOS-standard, developed by the five leading European natural and organic standards organisations, remains very much in its infancy.

Described by the chief executive of the Soil Association Helen Browning as the “gold standard”, COSMOS has been developed to try and make sure there is an international voluntary regulatory framework to ensure the consumer is not misled, and have rigorous standards around beauty the way we do around food.

But when journos, PRs and industry insiders gathered at the Organic Beauty Week press launch in June it was unanimously agreed that it will take a concerted marketing campaign to successfully communicate the intricacies of COSMOS and all it has to offer, not to mention certification as a whole.

Whole Foods Market, one of the leading natural and organic retailers and an active participator in Organic Beauty Week took the significant decision in 2010 to remove all beauty brands from its shelves in the UK that make organic claims without being backed up by certification. Now that’s the type of change that is needed.

Retailers taking accountability away from the consumer and placing it on their own shoulders is one sure-fire way of making sure change happens. But in those four years since Whole Foods made its brave leap, how many other retailers have followed its lead?

So how about this September, in addition to offering up tasty organic in-store delights labelled ‘EAT ME’ and ‘DRINK ME’, why not hang a ‘CERTIFY ME’ label on all false organic beauty claimants, and ship them back to sender? One small change that is sure to make a very big difference.

Julia Zaltzman is a freelance writer and editor of The Natural Beauty Yearbook

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