Friday, 30 July 2010

Wash Your Face

Veganism is still a fairly 'new' concept for most people- the vegan society actually started over 50 years ago, but because vegan numbers have only grown slowly, many are still not aware of what a vegan is, or see vegans as some weird radicals who chain themselves to tress (thank you the Simpsons! :P). In fact even though I've been a (nearly) lifelong vegetarian, until recently I had a very skewed concept of what veganism was. It wasn't until I started reading and exploring the subject, and I watched Meet Your Meat, that I started to understand why someone would be a vegan, and since that turning point the rest of my journey so far has been discovering how one is vegan. What to eat, wear, what products to use, what restaurants to go to- I learn more each day. Coming up for having been vegan for four months, I noticed that while a lot of vegan products have been reviewed, many haven't, plus I like reviewing things. So that's what squeaky clean vegan bean is for- squeaky clean because I want to review toiletries as well as food!


Star System: * = rubbish **= not great ***= OK ****= good *****= brilliant!

Face Wash

I've only tried two so far, both from Lush. Here's what I think.

Aqua Marina

Price: ***
Appearance: ***
Smell: ****
Effectiveness: ***


Paraben free and with what seems to be a chemical free recipe. Looks abit squidgy and pink with green bits of seaweed that fall onto the sink and have to be cleaned off after. However it has a nice, mild scent and feels soft and smooth against the skin. My two main complaints would be that it doesn't wash off too easily, and isn't very visible on my skin so I sometimes ended up with little pink dobs of it still on my face, plus that it has no 'scrub' in it so doesn't feel very strong acting/ exfoliating. But other than that it was nice and it lasted a long time- I kept using it after the expiry date and it was fine.


Herbalism

Price: ***
Appearance: **
Smell: ***
Effectiveness: ****

This is my current cleanser, again with no parabens and very natural- it's green, dry and crumbly, and smells very herby, which is fine but not hugely appealing. It does seem pretty effective though, as it contains crushed almonds which exfoliate, plus I only need a very small piece each time so I think it will last me ages (although it's worth bearing in mind that there's an expiry date). Overall however for scent and appearance I prefer Aqua Marina.



I think next time I'm going to try Angels on Bare Skin which may be a happy medium between the two. I also wouldn't mind trying other face washes/ cleansers which are not from Lush but will need to do some research into which are vegan!