Good Beauty Journey | Woolworths SA

Woolworths is on a journey to make a positive change in the world by looking after our people, community, animals and planet.

In a continued effort to deliver beauty products that make you look and feel good, we follow a set of principles entrenched in this idea to bring you products from our private label, WBeauty:

No Animal Testing or Ingredients

Woolworths has taken a stand against cruelty to animals and has policies to ensure that our products are animal friendly. Animal welfare is one of the focuses of Woolworths’ Good Business Journey. WBeauty products are never tested on animals.

Sustainability

Businesses are becoming increasingly aware that sustainable growth can only be achieved through greater attention to the environment. The links between economic growth, transformation, poverty alleviation, the environment and climate change can either form a vicious or a virtuous cycle. At Woolworths, we’re committed to making it the latter.

Quality Products

WBeauty products only contain ingredients that have a proven record of safety for general consumer use. Every ingredient used in the manufacturing of a WBeauty product is screened to ensure that it is of the highest quality and is gentle to use on your skin. Every formulation is approved by renowned toxicologists to ensure that the ingredients and inclusion levels are in line with international safety regulations. WBeauty products contain naturally derived active ingredients of the highest quality to ensure that you get the best possible benefits.

Natural Ingredients

WBeauty products contain the finest oils and extracts. We make an increasing effort to use those derived from natural botanical sources. WBeauty products only contain mild ingredients to ensure healthy skin and hair. All of our products are also dermatologically tested, which means they’re gentle to use on even the most sensitive skin.

Here are some examples of how these principles come to play:

Beauty Without Cruelty & Vegan Friendly

All of our WBeauty Products are endorsed by Beauty Without Cruelty.

Beauty Without Cruelty (BWC) is an animal rights organisation that educates and informs people about the exploitation, abuse and suffering of animals and to offer humane, non-animal alternatives to cruel and harmful testing. The focus is on the use of animals in research, however through peaceful and lawful means, the organisation exposes and opposes all cruelty to animals and lobbies national, provincial and local government in this regard.
BWC supports veganism as an expression of compassionate living. As a result, we are on the journey to using only plant-based and natural ingredients in our formulations, making them 100% Vegan friendly.

Sustainable Palm Oil

The Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) was established in 2004 to promote the use of sustainable palm oil. Woolworths is a proud member of the RSPO and contributes to the production of sustainably certified palm oil. Our beauty soaps are RSPO certified and we are extending this to other parts of our business. 

Biodegradable Microbeads

Microbeads are plastic microspheres usually found in exfoliating face and body washes. They gently scrub away dead skin, the same way a sponge would. Recently, concerns have been raised about the environmental impact of polyethylene microbeads and we’ve made it part of our Good Business Journey to stop the development of new products containing plastic microbeads. We currently use suitable substitutes in our formulations that are just as effective on the skin, but are also safe for personal use and much safer for the environment

Paraben Free

Parabens are a family of chemicals commonly used as preservatives in cosmetic products to prevent the growth of harmful bacteria and mould. The most-used parabens in cosmetics are methylparaben, propylparaben.  

Ingredient labels will typically list more than one paraben in a product.

There has been debate around certain parabens causing breast cancer. As a result, European regulations have banned isopropyl paraben, isobutyl paraben, phenyl paraben, benzyl paraben and pentyl paraben. The use of butyl paraben and propyl paraben, on the other hand, is allowed as they do not pose a risk to the consumers’ health, provided that the sum of the individual concentrations of these substances doesn’t exceed 0.19%.

Woolworths is committed to completely removing parabens from the entire WBeauty range.