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A few years ago, just the word “organic” on a beauty product would have caused a buying frenzy among the ecologically educated. The big O promised a healthier way of life, not to mention skin free of preservatives and pore-clogging parabens. It also hinted at more environmentally-sound practices.

Turns out organic was a term being used loosely. The organic, all-natural revolution spawned greenwashing, the marketing ploy that had many brands stamping the word “organic” or “organics” onto their shampoo or moisturizers just because it had about maybe three percent of fruit ingredients. Or they may have used ingredients grown organically but use packaging or production techniques that have a higher carbon impact on the environment than a jumbo jet transcontinental flight. 

In 2003, California put into effect the California Organic Products Act (COPA), which “prohibits the retail sale of any cosmetic product labeled as ‘organic’ unless that product meets the criteria of 70 percent organic content.” Basically, it’s an act that helps swat away greenwashing BS and strengthens the efforts of real organic beauty brands such as Juice Beauty.

Juice Beauty was founded six years ago by Karen Behnke, an entrepreneur who spent 25 years building a multi-million-dollar business out of wellness and healthy living. At 40, Behnke who was then pregnant with her first child, realized, according to Alaina Thompson, global marketing manager for Juice Beauty, that she had spent all this time exercising and eating healthy but she had not thought too much about the products that she had been putting on her body. “Karen started looking up the ingredients she saw on her beauty products and was shocked at all the horrible things she was putting on her skin, such as the petroleum and the paraben.”

Behnke didn’t find anything she was comfortable with while pregnant so, making the most of her entrepreneurial background, she bought the name “Juice Beauty” and launched a company dedicated to bringing “organic, high-efficacy and pleasurable beauty solutions to people worldwide.” And when she said organic, she meant authentically organic.