Green Beauty on a Budget – Affordable Makeup Options
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Toxic Ingredients In Our Beauty Products
Have you come across any of those articles going around about lead and other toxic ingredients lurking in your makeup?
Did you know that Europe has banned 1,328 chemicals from personal care products while the United States has only banned 11?
And many people are not aware that the FDA does not regulate cosmetics. The ingredients most companies use to color cosmetics are derived from petroleum and coal tar which are known carcinogens. This results in many products containing small amounts of heavy metals. When used daily over a long period of time, these small doses are absorbed by your body and the doses add up to damaging levels.
Many of the big name and even luxury brands like Revlon, Maybelline, Nars, Mac, Cover Girl, Avon, Sonia Kashuk, L’Oreal, and Laura Mercier contain these harmful ingredients.
One of the most common ingredients in red lipstick is Red Lake Dyes, a synthetic colorant that is considered a class 3 carcinogen with skin absorption detected.
Nail polish is not excluded from here. The EWG has an article which cites a study that “found that all women had a metabolite of triphenyl phosphate, or TPHP, in their bodies just 10 to 14 hours after painting their nails. Their levels of diphenyl phosphate or DPHP, which forms when the body metabolizes TPHP, had increased by nearly sevenfold.”
Luckily, there are tons of great, high performing nontoxic makeup brands you can choose from.
Switch To Affordable Nontoxic Makeup
Some of these brands are more affordable than others so depending on your budget, I recommend you sign up for newsletters to watch out for sales. I usually buy my personal care products around the holidays during the sales and it lasts me the whole year. Start with one product at a time. You don’t need to overhaul your whole stash at once.
All of the brands below I have personally used and recommend.
- Ilia – They have amazing lipsticks made with mostly organic ingredients. Very moisturizing, long lasting, and many shades to choose from.
- Hynt Beauty – The BEST concealer and mascara. The concealer is full coverage so you need a tiny amount. The mascara doesn’t flake and gives lots of volume and length. They have lots of other nice makeup too. They have a coupon for first time buyers.
- 100% Pure – Love their palettes, matte lipsticks, and BB cream. Purchase through this link to get free shipping. See below for 2 looks creating using all 100% Pure products.
- Au Naturale – Organic makeup. They have a great cream foundation for dryer skin types. I love their highlighter and bronzer sticks and the Su/stain lip stains are amazing.
- Zoya – Great nontoxic nail polish in too many shades.
- Lily Lolo – They have the green beauty cult mascara and gorgeous eye palettes.
- W3ll People – Another great mascara, and lots of other nontoxic makeup.
- RMS Beauty – Nontoxic makeup and skincare. They have a good medium coverage concealer and luminizer.
- Root Pretty – So much beautiful nontoxic makeup in a wide variety of colors.
- Alima Pure – High performing mineral makeup with a very popular foundation.
- Pure Anada – Very affordable nontoxic makeup brand
- Modern Minerals – pretty popular nontoxic makeup and some skincare
- Honeybee Gardens – affordable natural makeup on Amazon
- Honest Beauty – affordable natural makeup on Amazon
- Clove and Hallow – Amazing highly pigmented makeup line on Amazon
- Plume – eyebrow pomade that helps your eyebrows grow in fuller (35% discount with my link)
- Green Philosophy Beauty Corner – Green beauty shop with a mix of affordable and luxury brands. The looks I did below used products from this shop.
Credo Beauty – This is a shop with many different brands. They have rewards and often have gifts with purchase.
The Detox Market – Another green beauty shop with lots of different makeup and skincare brands. They have a coupon for first-time buyers. They also have a great sample program.
The Choosy Chick – Yet another one stop shop for green beauty. They also have a coupon for first time buyers.
Nontoxic Beauty Boxes
I also really like beauty subscription boxes for trying and finding new natural, organic, and nontoxic makeup.
Petit Vour is my favorite affordable beauty subscription box. It’s only $18 a month and includes 4-5 nontoxic and cruelty-free beauty products. You even get cash back rewards for reviewing the products you receive in the box! See a few of the boxes I’ve gotten below.
Looking for more budget friendly nontoxic makeup and skincare?
In addition to reading my posts on affordable clean beauty, be sure to join my email list to access my clean beauty shopping guides and more in my freebies library!
I see that you have listed a bunch of brands. I did not realize that there were so many green makeup companies. The company that I use is not on your list, yet I am happy to know there more and more people and companies are becoming aware. Thank you for sharing.
I am guessing you are talking about Beautycounter. I have not tried that brand though I’ve heard mostly good things and they have a good message. I do know they use some ingredients that are on my no list in some products though. Thanks for reading 🙂
Clean makeup has always been an area I have trouble with. It was so easy to trash cleaning products and poor quality food, but I seem to hold on to my cosmetics. This is a great list of clean brands, I’ll have to check them out.
I have heard that before. We stick to the things that we know work well for us and of course we want to look good. It’s tricky buying new makeup and more so buying online.
I had no idea the US was so behind Europe in banning toxic chemicals! Thanks for the great insight and list of products I’ll have to check out now!
Thank you for this list! I used to buy a great mascara at our local health food store, and I can no longer find it anywhere. I try my best to use non-toxic products, but I still have some nasty ones in my skin care and make up regiment. Time to lose those!
I was not aware of this at all! thanks so much for bringing this to my attention 🙂
I have been in makeup toxicity denial. Still using L’Oreal mascara and maybelline dark circle eraser. I will look for alternatives in your helpful list. The sunscreen my dermatologist recommends is La Roche-Posay. Now I am wondering about that too. Thanks for the insight. Will share this with friends on facebook.
Haha you’re not alone in that! Just take it one step at a time. Change one product at a time and eventually you’ll be all nontoxic with your makeup.
Wow, what a great roundup! I had no idea there were so many green makeup companies.
There are soooo many more but these are the ones I’ve tried that perform well and are affordable.
I love your post and it is so timely. I literally just tossed a ton of makeup and I’m onto more natural products.
This is such a great reminder to toss out all the old makeup I’ve hung onto! I’m still working on getting my daughter to use more natural cosmetics and this is a good resource to share. Thanks!
Wow… I also love toxic free everything and have lived that life for many, many years, almost since 1972… I know, that dates me but it is SO worth it for personal products, laundry, kitchen, ALL!! I have a list too but not complete yet! It’s one of the things I am passionate about! Great read, Thanks for this list, I hope it will inspire others to do the same with clean products! ♥
Thanks Charlie!
I have always struggled with my skin and finding the right products for it. I am going to look into each of these products as I have always known that the products I am using could be contributing to problems I’ve had keeping my skin free from breakouts.
I could write a book about this as my business is making and selling skincare. I wrote this in response to another comment:
Clear skin is 80% an internal issue so you have to consider that too. You can use the best skincare and makeup but if you are eating foods that cause acne or other skin issues then there’s nothing you can apply to your skin that will completely clear it. The most common triggers are dairy, gluten, and sugar.
Thanks for such a detailed list of green products. I haven’t even heard of these before now, but will look into them!
Reading articles and posts such as these terrify me! There needs to be a huge change in cosmetics!
No don’t get scared! Just be an informed consumer. Hopefully companies will soon figure out they can’t keep doing this.
Wow I had no idea that the US is so behind on baning chemicals in products!
I also agree natural and organic is the way to go in terms of beauty products. 🙂
Thank you for making a good list of brands to choose from. That makes things much easier!
This is a great idea for me for a New Year’s resolution. It’s something I’ve been thinking about for awhile!
I need to get new makeup. I stick to the same brand for a long time and i think I need to get winter specific makeup. I’m hoping to have clearer skin by buying better makeup too.
Clear skin is 80% an internal issue so you have to consider that too. You can use the best skincare and makeup but if you are eating foods that cause acne or other skin issues then there’s nothing you can apply to your skin that will completely clear it. The most common triggers are dairy, gluten, and sugar.
What! Thanks for the crucial information. I would check out the suggested green companies.
Thanks for this information. I hadn’t heard of any of those brands.
I love this post! I have been debating about trying 100%pure foundations but couldn’t find many reviews. I haven’t heard of any of the other brands but on your recommendation, I’m going to try Hynt!
The 100% Pure foundations are pretty light coverage and their BB cream is more full coverage. But Hynt is really much better for that. There are so many more brands but some are not that affordable or I haven’t tried so couldn’t’ recommend.
Thanks for this list! I prefer to have non-toxic, natural products in my home, but I’ve never really hunted for non-toxic makeup. Probably because I don’t wear much makeup. Do these products last a long time? Or do you have recommendations on which are best to spend the money on?
They are usually more concentrated so you use less but they expire more quickly than the conventional stuff because they are not using harsh preservatives. Usually it’s no less than 9 months though so not a big deal. The ones I listed are the top brands I recommend. There are other luxury and more well-known green brands but they are more expensive and I’m pretty simple with my makeup so I don’t use them anyway. Let me know if you have any other questions about this 🙂
EWG’s website has been so helpful to me!
Yes I used to use that website. It’s a great resource!
I’m not much into makeup, but I’d be interested in a post about skin care products in general. I try to buy only “green” especially not tested on animals. Thanks for sharing.
I will be writing one on skin care next month!
This is so important! thanks for staying up to date. I wonder how large the movement is in this country to ban these chemicals, and how large the lobby is to keep them in.