Cruelty-free, vegan, palm oil-free, no SLS… debunking haircare marketing
When it comes to buying your hair products, you’re probably one of two people. Either you buy the same products every week, the ones you swear by to make your hair look beautiful, or you’re drawn to new, exciting products or those that are on offer. Some people are a mixture of the two, keeping a stock of their favourite products in their shower but happily buying new products that appeal to them.
If you tend to read a label carefully when deciding whether to buy a new product, you’ve probably seen a few repeats on different items. Nowadays, it’s more and more common for a product to boast that it’s “cruelty-free”. Another popular marketing tool is to say that a product is “vegan”. Then there’s also “palm oil-free” and “no SLS”.
What exactly do these things mean? And should you automatically go for a product that claims one or all of these things? We’ll be covering it all in this post.
1. Cruelty-free
The most basic definition of a cruelty-free product is that it was made using methods that didn’t involve testing on animals. “Who still tests on animals?” you might ask, “isn’t that slightly archaic?” But actually, some of the biggest and most popular beauty and haircare brands still test on animals today.
Many people opt for cruelty-free products for moral reasons. The fact that a product is cruelty-free doesn’t make it any better or worse in terms of the ingredients it contains and how it reacts when used on your hair. You can check to see if a product is cruelty-free by looking for the little cruelty-free sign – a bunny hopping through a circle.
2. Vegan
A vegan haircare product doesn’t contain any animal-based ingredients. There are a number of non-vegan ingredients that are frequently found in haircare products, like lanolin, derived from sheep’s wool; glycerine, which generally comes from animal fats; sodium caseinate, derived from cow’s milk; and stearic acid, derived from pigs’ stomachs.
Many products use non-vegan ingredients as these ingredients highly effective at what they do. They’re never thrown into the mix for no good reason – they have a purpose. With that said, vegan haircare products contain ingredients that work in a similar way to non-vegan products, so again, you won’t notice much difference between the two.
3. No palm oil
If you weren’t living under a rock in 2019, you’ll know that there was a huge debate about the continued use of palm oil, not only for cooking and commercial products, but for beauty and haircare. Palm oil comes from oil palm trees, and is extremely versatile. The problem is, our need for palm oil is leading to the destruction of rain forests on a devastating scale.
This destruction is causing endangered animals to lose their homes, and is also leading to the production of millions of tonnes of greenhouse gases. There are alternatives to palm oil, like coconut oil, which you can find in a whole range of hair care products today. The problem is, no other oil can be grown as efficiently as palm oil, so if we increased the crop production of coconut oil, for example, we’d need between 4 and 10 times more land, according to the WWF. It’s a difficult one.
4. SLS free
If a product says it’s SLS free, it means it doesn’t contain the chemical Sodium Lauryl Sulphate, a popular foaming agent that you’ll find in lots of soaps, shampoos and conditioners. SLS has been found to be bad for us, the consumer – it strips both hair and skin of their natural oils, leading to dryness and irritation. If you experience sensitivity with some hair care products, it’s likely that they contain SLS.
Confusingly, products that don’t use SLS may use an ingredient called SLSA, which essentially sounds like the same thing, but is very different. SLSA isn’t a sulphate, and won’t affect hair negatively for that reason. It’s extracted from coconut oil or palm oil, and is much kinder to sensitive hair and skin. Not all products advertise that they’re SLS free, so it’s worth checking that ingredients list if you have a particularly sensitive scalp.