Meaningful transparency and thoughtful design. We’re on a mission to change the world, one product at a time.
Our Honest Philosophy
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Protecting human health is our top priority.
We love our babies. We love your babies. That's why we have a robust review process for ingredients. While no system is perfect, we do our best to be thoughtful and diligent in our selection process.
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We won’t compromise performance.
We believe you shouldn’t have to choose between what works and what’s good for you. That’s why we make breakthrough formulas designed and tested to perform.
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We’re thinking in the present and future tense.
And for us, this means ever exploring and evolving to improve our use of renewable resources — from plant-derived ingredients to the newest innovations in green chemistry to the amount of recycled and/or recyclable material in our packaging.
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Knowledge is power.
We believe you have a right to know what’s in your products and why. We’re committed to providing access to information and education that allows you to make the best choices for you and your family.
Clean Conscious™ Formulas
Toxicologist Audited Ingredients
Dermatologist Tested
Cruelty Free
Made Without Synthetic Fragrances
Clean Conscious™ Formulas
Toxicologist Audited Ingredients
Dermatologist Tested
Cruelty Free
Made Without Synthetic Fragrances
Clean Conscious™ Formulas
Toxicologist Audited Ingredients
Dermatologist Tested
Cruelty Free
Made Without Synthetic Fragrances
Clean Conscious™ Formulas
Toxicologist Audited Ingredients
Dermatologist Tested
Cruelty Free
Made Without Synthetic Fragrances
Ingredient & Material Assessment
Your health, safety and well-being are our top priorities. And we’re committed to providing you with high-performance products that you can feel great about using. That’s why we place such an emphasis on ingredient assessment, carefully choosing the ones we put into our products and the ones we leave out — in essence, everything you need and nothing you don’t.
That’s why we created our NO List™ — a list of over 3,500 chemicals/materials we choose not to use across all our products. Our NO List™ is made up of category-specific lists, because what causes a chemical/material to pose a risk is dependent on how and where it’s used. This list will continue to evolve, and we’ll dig deeper as new studies emerge.
We work hard to make our products without materials/ingredients from our NO List; however, manufacturing products is complicated, and we cannot always eliminate background or cross-contamination.
Each and every ingredient we choose to use in our products is evaluated for its safety and efficacy in use. In this process, we take into account the following:
Susceptibility - Some people are more susceptible than others — especially babies, who can be more sensitive to chemicals than adults.
Exposure - The "how" and "how much" is a critical part of determining ingredient safety.
Final formulation - The combination of chemicals matters a lot. Sometimes an ingredient that’s caustic by itself may be neutralized by other ingredients. On the flip side, some ingredients can be safe when used alone, but might be dangerous when combined with other ingredients.
There are three essential steps to our ingredient selection.
Research - We review epidemiological and experimental studies to examine things like potential dermal toxicity, inhalation toxicity and more. We survey international regulatory and expert opinion restriction lists. And we incorporate restriction criteria related to carcinogenicity, endocrine disruption, genotoxicity, bioaccumulation, environmental persistence, sensitization, and developmental, reproductive and systemic effects for ingredients.
Assessment - During this phase of the process, we investigate ingredients of potential concern, examine the relationship between dose and effect, and assess what the anticipated exposure would be if used in a product. We pull it all together to characterize the risks associated with the ingredients’ potential function in our products.
Risk Management - This is where we look at all the data we’ve compiled to determine which ingredients make the cut for our formulations. We carefully determine ingredients and their concentrations based on exposure scenarios, material source and safety data to provide you with a product that meets our safety standards.
Testing & validation
We go above and beyond to ensure that every product we develop lives up to our rigorous standards of safety, efficacy and stability. We utilize trusted ingredients that work, then test each product to ensure that it lives up to its promise. If it doesn’t, we’ll go back to the drawing board. Because you deserve nothing less.
We test final products in three different areas: safety, efficacy and stability.
Safety Testing - Safety assessment and testing is tailored to the particular product type and area of application and could include irritation and sensitization testing, ocular testing, and many other possible testing options to substantiate the safety of each specific product. Honest is a cruelty free brand and does not test on animals during development or production or allow any of our third parties to do so with our products.
Efficacy Testing - We’re serious when we say we strive to deliver a product that meets your needs and expectations. Our team of clinical specialists and chemists test efficacy through a variety of methods, such as clinical testing (which proves measurable results), consumer testing (which measures how consumers like you experience the product) and instrumentation testing (which can measure moisturization, firmness and things like how well a diaper absorbs and stays dry).
Stability Testing - We rigorously test our products to ensure they will remain as good as the day they were made. Robust stability testing is done to ensure time, heat, and cold will not impact the look, feel, or performance of a product over it's lifetime. Preservative Efficacy Testing confirms that the preservatives we use will continue to protect your products from microbes encountered in everyday use.
The end result: clean without compromise.
Production
Just as we take great care in the ingredient selection and assessment, and product safety, efficacy, and stability, we only work with manufacturing partners who share our deep commitment to quality. Our manufacturing partners are also routinely audited to ensure compliance to current Good Manufacturing Practices.
Good Manufacturing Practices include (but are not limited to):
- Controlled documentation and record keeping
- Cleaning protocols for the production line
- Safety protocols for the production line
- Building to laboratory controls
- Reviewing product quality complaints
Packaging
Making every day beautiful is natural to us; we design to inspire and delight. We're thoughtful about the composition of the materials in our packaging, and we are always exploring and evolving to improve our use of recycled content, recyclable materials, and improving our packaging development process.
Label transparency
We believe you have a right to know what goes into your products. As part of our Standard, we have established ingredient definitions that you can look to in order to understand exactly what we mean when we use these terms.
Label transparency is a cornerstone of our philosophy for empowering you to make choices for your family. We adhere to the below guiding principles around label transparency:
We label what’s inside.
Clearly, consistently: We list our ingredients, using internationally accepted nomenclature.
Including allergens: We also label allergens in personal care according to the European Union standard, which requires companies to label 80+ fragrance allergens when at 0.01% in rinse-off products and 0.001% in leave-on products. And we think that’s a good policy, whether you live in the EU or not.
And never disguising our ingredients with the word “fragrance”: We believe in adding beautiful scents to many of our products, but we’ll always tell you what’s inside. The word “fragrance” is often used as a label under which ingredients are hidden, and you deserve to know what goes into your products.
We tell you what the product is Made Without.
We know it’s not just about what’s in the product, but also what’s not. So we provide a relevant, specific set of ingredients that we choose to leave out, directly on many of our product labels. The more information you have to make choices that are right for your family, the better.
Of course, manufacturing products is complicated, and we cannot always eliminate background contamination or cross-contamination. But know that we work hard with our manufacturers to control this.
Ongoing evaluation
Our decisions are made based on the scientific data and evidence available at that time. Our team of in-house scientists and toxicologists stay informed as science continues to evolve and may update our standards, Made Withouts, and practices if new information comes out, as we are always moving in the direction of safe, sustainable, and effective.