Soil Association campaigns for clarity

As part of Organic Beauty Week (September 14-21), the Soil Association will run a campaign called Campaign for Clarity, asking brands to be truthful in their claims relating to organic content, and encouraging consumers to fight for a better understanding of what organic truly means.

The accredited organisation is calling for the introduction of legal guidelines, as there are currently none, concerning the percentage of organic ingredients that a product must contain in order to be labelled as such. This is to stop brands labelling products as organic when they actually contain less than 1% organic ingredients, which is sometimes the case. The Soil Association says this is deceiving to consumers looking for products with specific qualities.

The Soil Association’s website states: “To label the whole product as organic when it only contains tiny quantities of organic ingredients is misleading to the consumer. It also begs the question, what other ingredients does the product contain?”

According to its guidelines, a product can only be labelled as certified organic if it contains over 95% organic ingredients.