The EWG VERIFIED™ Mark: How Juana Skin Met the Strictest Clean Beauty Standards in the World

Here at Juana Skin, we’re proud to be leading the way in clean and sustainable beauty. Making natural and farm-fresh skincare products is central to our ethos – and now we’ve got big news: we’ve been accredited by the Environmental Working Group (EWG)! That’s the strictest verification standard for clean beauty products globally.

Not only are we the first brand in the GCC to be awarded this prestigious accreditation, but we’re also the first ever European CBD brand to carry the EWG VERIFIED™ mark. It’s an exciting new phase for Juana Skin, and we’re looking forward to working in collaboration with the EWG to drive the agenda of clean, sustainable, and transparent beauty in the Middle East and globally.

What is EWG and what does the EWG VERIFIED™ mark mean?

The Environmental Working Group (EWG) is a non-profit organisation with a 30 million-strong community of advocates. Its dedicated team of scientists, policy experts, lawyers, and communications & data experts work across the US to protect environmental health by changing industry standards and speaking out against outdated government legislation.

Established in 1993, the EWG’s mission is to empower consumers with breakthrough research to make informed choices and live a healthy life in a healthy environment. This non-profit works tirelessly to protect public health and help consumers better understand the products they use – and even the food they eat.

The EWG’s work is not just limited to the US, though. The organisation’s reach is global, with its internationally recognised EWG VERIFIED™ mark guiding consumers to trusted, clean and ethical products.

The EWG VERIFIED™ mark:

• Guarantees quality for beauty consumers
• Ensures a product is free from the EWG's ‘chemicals of concern’ (ingredients with health, ecotoxicity and/or contamination concerns)
• Means a product meets the EWG’s strictest health standards
• Drives companies to create healthier, safer products.

The EWG tests every ingredient in a product’s formulation and strictly abides by the regulations of every country, making it the most rigorous testing process for beauty products in the world. To-date, just under 2,000 products have met the EWG’s strict standards and become EWG VERIFIED™ – and Juana Skin products are on that exclusive list! 

How did Juana Skin become EWG VERIFIED™?

In the world of beauty products, the EWG VERIFIED™ mark is globally recognised as a badge of high quality and ethical manufacture. It’s not surprising, then, that it can take a while for products to undergo the EWG’s rigorous testing process.

For Juana Skin to become accredited, it took a total of eight months of meticulous review by an international team of over 20 toxicologists, chemists, epidemiologists, environmentalists, and cosmetic scientists.

The EWG’s product licensing programme imposes the strictest set of health and environmental protection standards. When reviewing a product, the non-profit goes far beyond checking the list of ingredients used in a formulation. Its team scrutinise every product so you can be sure that a product bearing the EWG VERIFIED™ symbol meets the strictest standards.

To become accredited, the team at Juana Skin:

• Submitted over 100 documents on where each of our products’ ingredients are sourced from – even trace ingredients
• Explained how each of our ingredients and trace ingredients are processed
• Provided test results, verifying that our formulations’ ingredients are ethically sourced and have not been contaminated by toxins.

Why is it important for you to seek out accredited beauty products?

Demand for clean beauty is on the rise. Consumers are increasingly looking for transparency when it comes to the ingredients in their beauty products. According to Edited Retail Analyst Heather Ibberson, speaking to Forbes, “with more time spent indoors over this past year, consumers have been wearing less makeup and focusing more heavily on their skincare, which has led to an increased consumer awareness of cosmetic ingredients.”

Ibberson also explains that, with the climate emergency high on the agenda, consumers are more conscious of what their products contain, and whether they are ethically produced and friendly to the environment.

Unfortunately, the market for clean beauty is actually rather murky. (Pretty ironic, we know). With clean and ethical products trending, there are a lot of companies trying to ride the wave of clean beauty, often making unfounded and potentially dangerous claims that their products are free from toxic chemicals.

A USA Today report explains that it’s not just beauty products that are unregulated, either. Terminology also follows no rules, with beauty companies able to use terms like ‘natural’ and ‘organic’ freely. Also up-for-grabs are words like ‘safe’, ‘green’ and ‘non-toxic’. Believe it or not – these can all be used on any packaging, and in the US beauty products don’t even need pre-approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) before going to market with these claims.

You’re likely seeing the value in a rigorous accreditation process around about now! Not only can organisations like EWG assure you that your skincare contains the highest quality, eco-friendly products, they also provide vital reassurance that your skincare products don’t contain harmful compounds.

How can I check the products I use are clean and safe?

Wouldn’t it be convenient if you could scan the products you use (or are thinking of buying) to check how clean they really are?

Good news – you can! The EWG Healthy Living app has safety profiles for over 200,000 beauty, cleaning and food products – all rated for health and safety by EWG scientists. The app includes the EWG's Skin Deep cosmetics database, an online guide that features safety ratings for more than 82,000 cosmetics and beauty products (and over 2,700 brands). 

By scanning the barcode of a product with your smartphone, the app gives you access to all the information you need to make an informed choice – and you can seek out EWG VERIFIED™ products like our range of therapeutic CBD products, too!

The Healthy Living app has garnered a strong base of celebrity advocates, with the likes of Kourtney Kardashian, Michelle Pfeiffer and Miranda Kerr having publicly praised EWG as their go-to source for making conscious choices about skincare products. "When it comes to the beauty essentials I use every day, it’s no secret that I prefer non-toxic goods,” shares Kourtney Kardashian. “I check all products on EWG’s Skin Deep [database] to make sure items rate a one or two (the lower the score the better).”

How is Juana Skin driving the agenda of clean beauty?

At Juana Skin, our aims are aligned with the work of the EWG. We live and breathe clean and sustainable beauty that’s never far from its natural source.

The Juana Skin ethos

As a child, Juana Skin Co-founder Juana Martini forged a deep connection with nature, spending time in her family's olive tree fields. She loved to help her father make Aleppo soap by pressing olive oil and mixing it with bay laurel. The result: not only did they create a product with unrivalled healing benefits for skin, she also learnt the importance of preserving the essence of natural ingredients in order to enjoy their immense therapeutic benefits.

For Juana Skin, clean beauty means products that are:

• Non-toxic
• Botanical-based
• Safe for people and the planet
• Made with environmental sustainability in mind

We’ve banned over 2,000 potentially harmful ingredients from our formulations, harnessing the immense therapeutic powers of clean, ethically sourced CBD.

Leading the way in clean beauty

Becoming EWG VERIFIED™ is a significant milestone for Juana Skin. We’re on a mission to de-stress skin through ultra-clean, sustainable, and clinically proven CBD-powered formulations. For us, this also means relieving the stress of our customers by cutting through the noise and providing a CBD product that is grown from good-quality hemp, cleanly processed, and highly potent. With the EWG on board, our consumers have peace of mind that our products are safe to use, highly effective at de-stressing the skin, and kind to the environment.

The clean beauty market is still in its infancy and has a lot to contend with from unregulated brands making false claims. Nonetheless, it’s very clear that there is a demand for reliably clean and sustainable skincare in the UAE.

At Juana Skin, we’re excited to drive the clean beauty agenda in the Middle East in close collaboration with the EWG. We plan to hold virtual events, run educational campaigns, and develop content together to ensure consumers understand the importance of clean beauty, are aware of what to look out for, and know how to distinguish clean products from the rest.

CBD works best when it’s combined with the right ingredients. Our EWG VERIFIED™, clean and sustainable skincare formulations include therapeutic-grade botanical extracts that support and enhance the benefits of CBD.