WHAT IS "COSMOS ORGANIC" ?

In a market saturated by convoluted descriptions, long ingredient lists and often far-fetched claims, sometimes as a consumer it can be confusing to sift through the products available to find those made in sync with your personal moral values. Luckily, there is a logo that you can look for to trust time and time again; the Soil Association COSMOS certification logo.

Here at Rawgaia we are proud that we have been inspected and satisfy the requirements of the COSMOS Organic Standard version 2. We have worked hard to achieve this certification along with our Cruelty Free International and Vegan Society certifications.

Our Organic Goji Goddess and the newly launched Hemp Glow Rituals are certified collections and show the COSMOS Organic logo on the packaging.

COSMOS certified products are produced to the highest standards for organic and natural cosmetics, are better for the environment and protect wildlife for future generations to come.

As a deeply thoughtful and ethically driven company, we thought we’d take some time to explore with you exactly what is required to meet the high COSMOS standards.

COSMOS originated back in 2002 when ‘the five main organisations involved in organic and natural cosmetics standards came together...and agreed to cooperate over developing a single, harmonised standard’ (1).

There is currently no legislation in regards to the production of organic beauty products and up unto this point, there was no overarching certification that could be used by consumers to ensure they were buying genuinely organic products.

Soil Association, one of the founding members explains that their motivation behind getting involved in this process was that previously anyone could ‘make an organic claim, no matter how the product was made and how much organic material it actually contains...this is both misleading to consumers and damaging to the organic industry.’ (2)

Once the bold decision was made to create a universal (and international) benchmark certification for organic beauty products, these companies had to decide exactly what it would contain.

Ecocert sums up their principles as promoting the use of ingredients from organic faming, using environmentally sound production and manufacturing processes that are safe for human health and including and expanding on the concept of ‘green chemicals’ (3).

This gives us a good starting point but in reality, barely scratches the surface of a very thorough certification process. The COSMOS Standard covers every step of producing an organic cosmetic product from sourcing to labelling and communication (and everything in between) within 12 detailed chapters.

These include; origin and processing of ingredients (which is then broken down into a further five categories), composition of total product, storage, manufacturing and packaging, environmental management, labelling and communication and inspection, certification and control (1). So in-depth is the certification that it took seven years from the initial agreement for it to be launched.

For a product to receive the COSMOS Organic certification, at least 95% of the ingredients must be organic and must have been extracted with simple physical actions (nanotechnology is severely limited) and at least 20% of the total finished product (including water) must be organic (4). A few of our products contain less than 95% organic of total so they have the COSMOS logo, but do not have "Organic" in their description.

If you are ever in any doubt, we clearly mark each glass jar or bottle and outer box with the total percent of organic ingredients. This is also displayed on our website for each product.

As you can imagine, to produce our cosmetics to this standard is very time consuming but we wouldn’t change it for the world!

With skin being our largest organ and one potentially absorbing everything we put on it into our blood stream, we think it is more than worth the lengthly process to ensure that our products are as organic and natural as possible.

We want our valued customers to truly trust that our products are kind to both the planet and your skin and we hope that by having the COSMOS certification, you will know that we truly stand by our values and are committed to producing the highest quality, most environmentally friendly, sustainable products possible.

References

1. https://cosmos-standard.org/the-cosmos-standard/
2. https://www.soilassociation.org/certification/beauty-wellbeing/why-certify-with-us/
3. http://www.ecocert.com/en/cosmos
4. http://www.icea.info/en/perche-bio/cosmesi-e-detergenza/cosmesi/cosmos-organic-inspected