As a natural skin care manufacturer I know what is allowed and not allowed with product labeling. As a natural skin care purchaser feel disillusioned when I make a purchase only to find the company isn’t doing what is legally required of them and/or duping the customer.
Legally companies are required to list ALL product ingredients on their labeling (aside from fragrance and other patents which have secret formulas). This is compulsory in case you have an allergy or bad reaction to an ingredient in the product. As a consumer you have the right to know if a product contains something you’re allergic to or an ingredient you want to personally avoid.
Some companies list the product ingredients on the box or outside packaging of the product and not on the label itself. This is acceptable legally because as a consumer you can still find out what is in a product prior to using it – even if you throw away the packaging before reading the ingredients.
Here are examples of dubious labeling I’ve personally experienced.
1) A product that listed all the ingredients and stated ‘essential oils’ but did not specify what essential oils it contained. This is No No because let us say a consumer is allergic to orange essential oil and this product contains that ingredient, the customer uses the product and has a bad reaction. Not good. Where as if it’s on the label the customer can then make an informed decision not to use that product.
2) A website that claims to be natural yet does NOT list ANY of the ingredients they use, or only lists what they class as ‘active ingredients’. A product is purchased and upon reading the label the consumer finds the product contains propylene glycol , mehylchloroisothiazolinone or methylisothiazolinone etc. (not only non-natural but also hazardous ingredients). As a consumer I want to know ALL the ingredients a company uses and will avoid websites that do not have a complete ingredients list.
3) A website claiming to be natural yet when products are purchased there are NO ingredient details written on the packaging. If a company is as natural as they claim and have nothing to hide why not let consumers know what is in the products they’re using.
4) A product that lists all the essential oils it contains yet not the other ingredients the oils are in.
These are just a few examples of misleading ingredients listing and companies not being 100% transparent about the ingredients they use.
