For more vegan/cruelty-free cosmetics in India reviewed in this blog, you can click here.
Lotus Herbals’ lipsticks have the following two characteristics that indicate they may be fit for vegan use:
1. No animal testing: Lotus Herbals does not test its lipsticks (or any of its cosmetic products) on animals. The Company’s position on animal testing can be read here.
2. No animal ingredients: Lotus Herbals' claims its lipsticks to be animal-ingredient free, which means being free of animal fats, beeswax, and pigments obtained by killing beetles. A standard lipstick contains the following ingredients: oil, wax, fragrance, preservatives, antioxidants, and pigment – with oil and wax being the primary ingredient (source). We corresponded with the R&D department of Lotus Herbals and received confirmation that the wax used in the lipstick is from vegetable sources (jojoba) only. For reviews of Lotus Herbals' lipsticks, you can click here.
Availability of Lotus Herbals lipsticks
These lipsticks are available all over the country in select cosmetic and beauty outlets. If you are unable to locate one in your city, you may want to drop a mail at care@lotusherbals.com and ask for the required information.
We have a list of the outlets in Bangalore where these lipsticks are available: BG Road (Dabur New 'U'), Commercial Street (Empire Store and Hairizon), Garuda Mall (Health & Glow), Kormangala (More), Lido Mall (Big Bazaar), and Old Madras Road (Big Bazaar).
While you are at it, you can also look around for a host of other beauty and make-up products by Lotus Herbals, all of which are claimed to be 100% animal-ingredient free. The Lotus Herbals website is a good starting point to explore their line of beauty products.
Top four reasons why your cosmetic should be vegan
1. Animal testing is unethical: Testing products on animals causes irreversible damage to the body parts of the sentient beings making them go blind, lose mobility, suffer complete loss of senses, or spend days in a cage in fear and agony or shrieking for mercy until the time they are silenced forever, that is, when the “testing” is over. Learn more about the atrocious practice of animal testing at this link on the web page of the International Association Against Painful Experiments on Animals.
2. Animal testing is ineffective: The absurdity of animal testing lies in the fact that a so called “successful” test on an animal does not in any way guarantee that the cosmetic product, the lipstick in this case, will not have an undesirable impact on the human lip in the long-term. Humans are programmed by Nature to outlive the natural life span of the animals used in experiments, so how can the test result, for example from a rabbit, be extrapolated to humans? Here is an article at AboutMyPlanet that cites six reasons why animal testing does not work.
3. Availability of humane methods of testing: There are numerous humane and reliable alternatives to animal testing. Here is an article by PETA, titled Alternatives: Testing Without Torture that documents the alternatives to animal testing.
4. Animal ingredients are outcomes of cruel industrial practices that violate the ethical and spiritual codes of living in harmony with Nature: Ingredients of animal origin are unnecessary in cosmetic products. They can easily be done away with and replaced by plant-based ingredients. Some prominent non-vegan ingredients used in cosmetics are the following: animal fats/animal-derived glycerin or glycerol (obtained from slaughterhouses), beeswax, carmine (extracted by boiling alive pigmented beetles), eggs, goat milk, honey (obtained by driving the bees out of their hives [their homes] and then robbing them of their food); lanolin (fatty substance obtained from wool-bearing animals), lipase (enzyme extracted from the stomach and tongue of calves and lambs), musk (obtained from the genitals of the male Musk Deer, skimmed milk powder (SMP), and yoghurt. Here is a comprehensive PETA-compiled list of the animal ingredients to watch out for in various products.
Trends
- The European Union has already passed a ban on animal testing effective, 2009 and a complete sales ban on products tested on animals effective, 2013 (source). There is an agitation brewing against animal testing in the Indian horizon (source) as well.
- The other bit of good news is that we are seeing a rise in cosmetic companies that believe in using plant-based ingredients in their products as opposed to animal ingredients, chemicals, and other toxic substances. There is little or no need for testing of any sort on plant-based ingredients. This is a pointer for us – as consumers, we must seek out companies that use environment-friendly, plant-derived ingredients in their cosmetics. In addition to such companies likely not to test their products on animals, such products will, beyond doubt, be friendly to our own bodies as well.
“Cruelty to animals is as if man did not love God… there is something so dreadful, so satanic, in tormenting those who have never harmed us, and who cannot defend themselves, who are utterly in our power.” ~Cardinal John Henry Newman~
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