Finding clean and thoughtful products is not always easy. Especially when it comes to makeup and skincare and there are thousands of choices in front of you to pick from. Ulta is the largest beauty retailer in the U.S. that focuses on a large range of products and sells what seems like limitless options. So to help with that we will walk you through how we go about finding great makeup and skincare products at Ulta that are created with you in mind.
To start us out, let’s talk about Ulta’s Conscious Beauty Initiative. Which is a great and impactful move that Ulta is doing to promote brands that as Ulta puts it “share your values.” Conscious Beauty is founded around transparency and choice. Here about Happy Valley Green we are trying to help make those choices a bit easier. So let’s start with how to use Conscious Beauty’s Brand List as a tool for making these decisions the next time you get your makeup or skincare.
The Five Values
Ulta measures products with five values. Which value you are looking for might be different from others so it is important to be familiar with them. The first is clean ingredients, which has a Made Without List. This can be particularly helpful if you are health conscious or have sensitivities. The next is cruelty free which is incredibly important in any product that you are buying. Vegan is different from cruelty free because it describes ingredients not testing. This can be a complex one because it includes animal products, by-products or derivatives. For people with allergies and sensitivities this is an important section like the clean ingredients. Sustainable Packaging means that the product is either refillable or comes in recyclable material, either able to be recycled or made out of already recycled materials. This is one of our personal favorites and a value that we hold. The coolest value is the last, Positive Impact, it is not just about the products themselves but about the brands.
Brand List As a Tool
Conscious Beauty has a database that lists all of the brands that at least one of these values apply to. One of the best hacks that we found is using this list as a tool to find products that you will love and match your values. In alphabetical order you can research all the brands and see what values they match. If you are interested in searching by function the main Conscious Beauty page has those sections and using the Brand List you can cross reference those to see what other values they have.
Brands You Already Use
If you aren’t into the research and want to quickly look at products you already buy you can review the summary section. Looking at this Energizing Eye Kit by Good Molecules we can see that it has four out of the five values. Speaking from experience this has been a great product to use. You should be able to find this section on every product you look at. It can give you a more in depth look at individual products rather than the entire brand.
Overall, we highly suggest using this tool and looking for the Conscious Beauty values the next time you are at Ulta. Happy sustainable shopping!
