How to keep your skin, and furry friends, happy.

Many face & body moisturizers on the market use animals or animal products to enhance their moisturizing powers. For those of us who are vegan, environmentally-conscious, and/or animal-cruelty conscious; finding great moisturizers can be a challenge. To help, we’ve put together a list of some products, ingredients, and advice on getting the best feeling and looking skin – guilt-free!

The more moisture in the soap, the more in your skin.

This may seem like a no-brainer, but with ingredient lists reading like a chemistry textbook, it can be hard to know if the soap you just bought is going to do a good job cleaning and moisturizing your skin. A lot of commercial cleaning agents can leave your skin feeling fresh and clean, but also tight and dry. If you want to be animal-free, then the challenge is two-fold because animal-derived ingredients aren’t labelled as being “derived from animals.”
The big moisturizing ingredient to watch out for is lanolin. This ingredient is derived from sheep’s wool. A vegan alternative to lanolin would be vegetable-derived glycerin soap. Glycerin is a gentle cleaning agent that keeps the moisture in your skin. Glycerin can also be scented to create many varieties to please many types of preferences.

Here’s just a few below. (pictures of products with link embedded in pic)

Head-to-Toe Moisture

Whether you apply before bed, after a shower, or before exercising; body creams are a great way to add moisture to your body. Thankfully, there are many vegan alternatives to common milk and animal fat moisturizing ingredients.
Instead of using products that have turtle oil, mink oil, lanolin, or other animal fats, people can use oils derived from plants. There’s a plethora to choose from, so take your pick. Sunflower oil. Cotton oil. Avocado oil. Almond oil. And jojoba (pronounced ho-ho-bah) oil all nurture your skin and leave it feeling soft and renewed.

Pick Your Spots, Hands, Face, Feet…

Different people have different problem areas when it comes to dry skin. Your skin also changes between different areas (the skin on the back of your hands is much different than the skin on your face). So while you might be tempted to buy just one moisturizer, buying particular moisturizers for certain parts of your body will give you better results.

To keep it vegan, check these 3 common active ingredients.

•  The butter is derived from plants like shea, cocoa, or kukui.
• The oils are derived from plants such as hemp, avocado, or jojoba.
• Humectants are plant based such as aloe vera, plant-derived glycerin.

Find dedicated lotions to use on your problem areas to have the best results.

Vegan Mindstate

An irritated, flaky, itchy scalp can ruin a perfectly good day – not to mention what it can do to not-so-perfect days! Your scalp is an especially important part of your body that needs to be treated independently of your other skincare routines.

That hardest part about finding vegan shampoos is that many companies do not list on the bottle that they test on animals and they also may not list that an ingredient is animal derived.

Here are some well-known animal-derived ingredients that are used to treat common issues and vegan alternatives:

• Hyaluronic acid, used to moisturize hair, is usually animal derived, but it can also be made through biofermentation (you’ll have to check with the manufacturer to be sure).
• Bee’s wax and other products (like honey) can be replaced by plant-derived glycerin.
• Animal fats like squalene and caprylic acid can be replaced by plant oils.
• Keratin, used to increase hair strength, can be replaced by plant-proteins like panthenol.

With all the great vegan options on the market today, having a vegan skincare routine means having a better skin care routine. While it may take a little digging, vegan product prices are usually comparable, and the removal of preservatives and other extraneous ingredients make them better suited for sensitive skin.

If there’s a vegan skincare solution you love, leave a comment and let others know how it can  help them.