The day I have been waiting for has finally arrived! September saw the long awaited takeover of The Body Shop by Brazillian cosmetics giant Natura, a company who has a completely cruelty free stance. The corporation reportedly paid 1 billion euros for the chain which currently operates in 66 countries.
Cruelty free bloggers were delighted when the news broke in June this year, with the completion taking place in the first few weeks of September. The company was previously parented by L'Oreal, who have always been at the centre of controversy as one of the world's largest animal testers. The Body Shop always retained their cruelty free stance however, but I chose not to buy from them as I did not want to see any of my money going to L'Oreal. This is an ongoing discussion in the cruelty free blog world, so feel free to comment below with your opinions.
In light of the news I took a trip to my local store today to see what I'd been missing since I boycotted the store at the beginning of my cruelty free switch. I can happily say I was pleasantly surprised! The brand has retained it's core values in terms of product and packaging, it was nice to see some old favourites (the bar soaps and body butters!) and some new additions (the cosmetics line has grown massively) for me to try out too.
I got chatting to the lovely girls behind the counter about the takeover and they seemed delighted at the news. They were really pleased that I was returning to the store and encouraged me to tell all of my friends too, so here I am!
Natura have vowed to keep the companys founder, the late Anita Roddick's vision alive with their path for The Body Shop. They have insisted that they will be focusing on activism once again, dealing with sustainability issues and community trade.
I'm so excited to be able to say that I am a Body Shop customer once again.
I'm even more excited to let you know about their current SPEND £50 GET £25 OFF deal currently on the website. I have taken full advantage of this already so I'll be posting what I think of the products when they arrive! Use code 19806 at checkout. Includes free delivery.
So about 6 months ago, my friend and I decided that we were going to change one major thing in our lives by going entirely cruelty free with our cosmetics. It started with seeing an unfortunate set of images circulating on Facebook, of a test lab in China for the manufacturers of Mac cosmetics with some of the worst animal cruelty I've ever seen. I won't be posting them here, but a quick Google search will bring up all the horrors we saw, along with an upsetting amount more.
After this I decided to delve a bit deeper and do some research of my own into the subject. As far as I was aware animal testing in the EU had been illegal for some years now so I wrongfully assumed that everything I was buying wasn't subject to these testing methods. I was correct in thinking that the EU does not allow the sale of animal tested products, as stated here on the Cruelty Free International site:
'From 11 March 2009, the EU banned the testing, within the
EU, of cosmetic ingredients – irrespective of whether there were
non-animal alternatives. It had already banned the testing in the EU of
cosmetic products. The bans are known as ‘the testing bans’.
From 11 March 2013, the EU completed the ban on the sale of
cosmetics animal-tested after that date anywhere in the world. The ban
applies to both cosmetics products and ingredients, again irrespective
of whether there are alternatives. It is known as the ‘marketing ban’.'
Obviously this is a huge victory in the animal rights sector, however there are ways and means of brands getting around these laws - and boy they do. The main way I've come across so far are brands who word their 'cruelty free' policies carefully - hoping that people don't notice or care that the testing is happening overseas. The main culprit of this is China. China requires animal testing by law, something that has been and continues to be debated internationally as technology has advanced so far that these testing methods should now be redundant. Unfortunately this is still the case however some consumer brands admit to be working with the Chinese government to end these tests.
Another issue I've had to research into is parent company testing. As you're probably aware, most brands are owned by a parent company, for example Mac is owned by Estee Lauder, The Body Shop is owned by L'Oreal etc. I'll continue to use The Body Shop as an example as it's known on the British High Street for being widely known as a cruelty free brand. Well - technically it isn't, depending on what your personal definition of cruelty free is. You can be sure that The Body Shop's ingredients or finished products have not been tested on animals, and if you're happy knowing that then fair enough, however much of their profit is paid to their parent company (L'Oreal) who are one of the biggest animal testers in the world. So effectively you are funding animal testing in this sense by purchasing their products. This is why I have decided to go a bit further and not purchase products by brands whose parent companies test on animals. Here's a link to the Daily Mail's article on the subject for more information.
I was soon introduced to the massive market for cruelty free cosmetics as an alternative online. Blog's such as Cruelty Free Kitty have been a huge help, shedding light on who's who in the cruelty free world. It took a good few weeks of heavy Googling to find out the worst offenders and I've compiled a handy little list on the Notes app on my phone for when I'm out and about (I will share this with you.) It does make shopping a little more difficult I'll admit, but if it takes me an extra 10 minutes to find a shampoo that hasn't harmed a little bunny somewhere then that's fine with me.
Anyway, you'll notice that I haven't posted on Mannequin for a long while, no excuses here I've just had more important things that took my mind away from blogging for a while. But now that I'm back you'll see the posts changing to cruelty free cosmetics only. I appreciate that not everyone feels this way about their beauty products and many people would agree that they'd prefer just not to think about where they come from and how they've been tested. That's understandable as I was never particularly thoughful about it either, but if you decide that you'd like to join me in this venture then Mannequin will be here to help you as usual.
I will be focusing on promoting brands available in the UK as I've noticed this information is slightly limited as most blogs focus on the US, however I'm open to hearing about all brands. If you or someone you know has a cruelty free brand to tell us about please leave a comment or contact us on the menu above, I can't wait to hear from you!
