Down College Hill and slightly nestled behind the Corner Tavern in Beaver Falls, is a small warehouse. While its location may be relatively unknown to locals, this building houses a business that is very well-known to the rest of the country – Nourish Organic.
For nearly two years now, starting around the 12th of each month, in a rush of anticipation, I race home and eagerly check the mailbox. Catching sight of a bright puffy pink envelope is like waking up on Christmas morning. Thanks to Ipsy.com and only $10 a month, I receive twelve makeup bags a year. They are filled with things like lipsticks, creams, and powders. It’s easily the best ten dollars I spend each month, with the exception of my weekly HDS fix.
Thanks to my monthly makeup delivery, I get to try different beauty products without making a major commitment or spending too much. Enter: Nourish Organic.
Tucked inside one of my monthly floral makeup pouches, along with other various cosmetic goodies, was a sample of Nourish Organic’s Eye Treatment cream. I was immediately drawn to the label, with its clean and simple appearance, fancy font, and bright green avocado illustration. The clean white packaging allowed the important information to stand out – the USDA Organic insignia and their Beaver Falls location. With that, my research and subsequent love, began.
According to the Nourish Organic website, their parent company (and possibly a more familiar name for locals) Sensibility Soaps Inc., has been in the skincare industry for over ten years. Personally dubbed, “organic beauty pioneers”, they were the first of their field to not only create a chemical-free skincare line, but are also the first beauty line in the world to have obtained it’s USDA Organic certification.
This certification, according to the USDA, ensures that the product is 95-100% manufactured without using pesticides, ionizing radiation, sewage sludge, genetically modified organisms, antibiotics, growth hormones, or synthetic fertilizers. This is an important certification that sets Nourish Organic apart from other self-proclaimed “organic” skincare and beauty producers.
Currently, there is no regulatory agency to confirm a beauty product is using only organic or safe ingredients. This means that, while some product lines uses the term “organic”, they could still be utilizing harsh chemicals and potentially harmful ingredients. They are also an Oregon Tilth Certified Organic producer, which is another standard by which they are measured to ensure their products and ingredients line up with the federal criteria for organic practices through inspections and contracts.
Not only are they a certified organic skincare company, but they also ensure that all packaging is recyclable and made with at least 25% post-consumer recycled content. All products are gluten-free and many are also vegan-friendly. They are recognized by the Coalition for Consumer Information on Cosmetics’ Leaping Bunny Program for their commitment to cruelty-free production and use of ingredients that have not been tested on animals.
Feeling pretty confident in my research and having been in the market for new deodorant, I decided to give their Almond Vanilla deodorant a shot. Thanks to previous research (I know, dork), I knew there could be an unpleasant period when transitioning from deodorants with aluminum to more natural alternatives. After this period, which honestly seemed brief, I was surprised with how well it worked. Just to make sure, I wore it on one of the hottest days in the summer, on a bus that just lost its air-conditioning. Actually, this was not planned, but it was definitely a great test of strength, scent, and endurance.
Happy with my new beauty line and wanting to share the goods with my pregnant sister, I decided to do yet another check on its safety, just to make sure. I used two resources available to beauty consumers to rate skincare and beauty products, the Environmental Working Group’s Skin Deep Cosmetics Database and the Think Dirty mobile app.
The EWG is a non-profit, non-partisan organization that was formed to protect us and our environment. They developed a database and rating system for over 62,000 beauty products, which provides the consumer with a rating of 1-10. The higher the rating, the more hazard the product for use. Factors include carcinogenic ingredients, potential toxicities such as reproductive or immunological, and other use restrictions.
Think Dirty is a free app available that utilizes a similar process to evaluate over 68,000 products, which also uses a numerical rating system, 0-10. It was developed by a group of researchers to, “empower conscious beauty shoppers to vote with their money.”
Both resources rated my new deodorant in the green zone of 0-2, which meant it was safe to use. Yay!
Thanks to Ipsy, Nourish Organic not only meets the needs of those searching for a healthy alternative to chemical-laden beauty lines, but helped me, a makeup fanatic who also tries to be as environmentally and health conscious as possible, find a product made locally that makes my little Beaver County heart swell with pride.
Nourish Organic products can be purchased on their website, as well as at Whole Foods, Giant Eagle, and Market District.
