Brand Breakdown: Is Tatcha a Clean Beauty Brand?
How tatcha Started
Tatcha is a Japanese skincare brand founded by Vicki Tsai in 2009 while seeking solutions to heal her acute dermatitis. On a trip to Asia, she unexpectedly found herself in Kyoto, where she encountered a culture of harmony, beauty, and well-being that healed her from skin to soul.
The company’s mission is to help bring you harmony from skin to soul. They believe that skincare can be care of all health: physical, mental, and even emotional. Tatcha claims their formulas can be anchors of larger well-being rituals that touch the mind and engage the five senses for harmony from skin to soul.
Is Tatcha as clean as they claim to be? We reviewed the brand to find out.
How we Rank the Brand
Green Heart – We approve of this brand’s products and they contain zero known toxins.
Yellow Heart – We approve of most ingredients in this brand’s products, they might contain some toxins or known allergies.
Red Heart – We suggest you proceed with caution and limit your expose and use to this brand’s products as there are toxins present.
Ingredients of Tatcha
Tatcha claims to be a natural company that produces luxury skincare for different skin types, such as dry, combination, oily, sensitive, and mature skin.
When we think of “natural” we think of products coming from nature. While there are a few ingredients that are “natural” like water, rice, and plant material in Tatcha’s products, most of their active ingredients contain synthetic materials. However, they do provide a list of harmful substances like mineral oil, sulfates, synthetic fragrances, phthalates, parabens, urea, DEA, and TEA that are never included in their products and provide full transparency of what the ingredients are in each product.
Below you will see a snapshot of their Dewy Skin Cream Moisturizer ingredients.
Breaking Down the Toxins
While some of Tatcha’s ingredients are clean or non-toxic, we found ingredients that we do not recommend.
Fragrance/Parfum
Fragrances can be complicated if they are not from a pure essential oils. This is a tricky way for companies to hide chemicals and additional synthetics into their products and not have to be transparent about the labeling.
PEGs (Polyethylene Glycols):
PEGs are Thickeners, Solvents, Softeners, Moisture-carriers, and Penetration Enhancers and can be contaminated with 1,4 dioxane and ethylene oxide. Linked to endocrine disruption and reproduction harm.
Phenoxyethanol
Formulations using >1%. A Preservative and Fragrance Ingredient that can be linked to organ toxicity.
Limonene
Limonene is a scent ingredient from citrus rind that can cause skin and respiratory issues.
Mica
While not necessarily harmful to the body, Mica is typically sourced unethically and can cause an environmental and social impact.
Citral
Citral is a scent ingredient that has the potential to cause allergies or dermatitis.
Synthetic Dyes
Synthetic dyes such as Red 40 or Violet 2, absorb into the body and may contain carcinogenic effects.
Going Beyond Beauty
Sustainability
Tatcha is on a quest to make their products sustainable inside and out. They “pledge to share their learnings for the benefit of everyone on this journey” through Waste, Climate, and Sourcing.
Giving Back
Tatcha supports an organization called Room to Read whose mission is to change the world through education. They also created Beautiful Faces, Beautiful Futures to help fund girls to stay in school and reach their potential through the Girl’s Education Program in Asia and Africa.
Animal Welfare
Tatcha confirms its cruelty-free status through third-party animal rights organizations and labels their products as cruelty free.
Cruelty- Free
Tatcha confirms that they are truly cruelty-free. They do not test finished products or ingredients on animals, and neither do their suppliers or any third-parties.
Vegan
Tatcha is not 100% vegan as some of their products may have derived from animals.
Parent Company
Tatcha is owned by Unilever.
Final Rating:
Some of Tatcha’s ingredients do come from nature and are not harmful. However, we found some ingredients we recommend avoiding like PEGs, fragrance, phenoxyethanol, gold, limonene, and citral.
