Sandra Says: I read about Aveda products being derived from plants. Wanting to move away from toxic products, I excitedly bought shampoo and conditioner. The first ingredients sound great…then the list grows with increasingly complex multi-syllable chemical words that I find hard to believe are just plants! Technically I suppose everything on earth comes from ‘nature’ but I was expecting plant extracts ONLY not plant extracts and the same old chemicals. Whats up here? Is it marketing hype?
The Left Brain laments: 
Sandra, I think you guessed it…Aveda is mostly marketing hype. Consider Aveda’s Color Conserve Shampoo
Shampoo Ingredients
Their ingredient list (as taken from Drugstore.com)
Aqueous Purified Water Extracts: Camellia Sinensis Extract, Citrus Aurantium Amara Peel Extract (Bitter Orange), Astragalus Root (Membranaceus) Extract (Milk Vetch), Schizandra Chinensis Fruit Extract, Pinus Tabulaeformis Bark Extract (Pine), Vitis Vinifera Seed Extract (Grape), Sedum Rosea Root Extract, Rehmannia Chinensis Root Extract, Ammonium Lauryl Sulfate, Disodium Laureth Sulfosuccinate, Lauramidopropyl Betaine, Cinnamidopropyltrimonium Chloride, Quaternium 80, PEG 7 Dimethicone C8-C18 Ester, Babassuamidopropyl Betaine, Guar Hydroxypropyltrimonium Chloride, Amyl Salicylate, Amyl Cinnamate, Lycopene, Lecithin, Tetrahexyldecyl Ascorbate, Tocopherol, Sucrose Palmitate, Stearamidopropyl Dimethylamine, Glycol Stearate, Glycol Distearate, Polyglyceryl 10 Oleate, Polyquaternium 7, Fragrance, Cistus Ladaniferus Oil, Glycerin, Citric Acid, Disodium EDTA, Propylparaben, Methylparaben, Methylisothiazolinone, Methylchloroisothiazolinone
They actually aren’t following the naming conventions of the INCI Dictionary because the term “Purified Water Extracts” is not an official name. If you strip away from this list all the stuff that is just marketing fluff, you’re left with the following ingredients that actually make the product work.
Water, Ammonium Lauryl Sulfate, Disodium Laureth Sulfosuccinate, Lauramidopropyl Betaine, Cinnamidopropyltrimonium Chloride, Quaternium 80, PEG 7 Dimethicone C8-C18 Ester, Babassuamidopropyl Betaine, Guar Hydroxypropyltrimonium Chloride, Stearamidopropyl Dimethylamine, Glycol Stearate, Glycol Distearate, Polyglyceryl 10 Oleate, Polyquaternium 7, Fragrance, Glycerin, Citric Acid, Disodium EDTA, Propylparaben, Methylparaben, Methylisothiazolinone, Methylchloroisothiazolinone
You have the same kind of formulas you find in conventional shampoos.
That includes water, detergents (ALS, disodium laureth sulfosuccinate, lauramidopropyl betaine), conditioning ingredients (all the ones after betaine up to fragrance), fragrance, adjustment ingredients (to make manufacturing easier), and preservatives (parabens, isothiazolinones).
And you’ll find many of these ingredients in store brands like Pantene, Suave, Dove, Fructis, Tresemme, etc. There is nothing particularly natural about Aveda shampoos anyway. They do have a requirement that all the ingredients can be traced back to some plant but ultimately, this is a ruse.
The Beauty Brains bottom line:
Aveda produces good, high quality products, but they are no more natural or good for you than anything else you can buy. They have some environmental stances that are laudable which may help make you feel better about buying them. But these marketing shenanigans sure make me lose faith in them.
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THANK YOU! LADY, WHO COLORED MY HAIR SAID AVEDA IS ALL NATURAL. I BELIEVED SO I BOUGHT SHAMPOO AND CONDITIONER. THAN I BROUGHT IT BACK. WE ARE FOR ALL NATURAL.!!!!!!
I thought I would add for you my own review of the Suave Professionals’ Rosemary Mint.
The shampoo is listed as being for ‘normal’ hair, which is what Aveda RM is recommended for use on. The Suave shampoo’s scent is not as ‘natural’ or ’strong’ smelling as Aveda. It kind of smells like hand soap. The shampoo lathers very well compared to Aveda and the rinsed feeling is squeaky clean.
The conditioner scent is more true to the Aveda scent. It takes less Suave conditioner to get a nice smooth feeling than the Aveda RM conditioner. The hair has a weird after feeling, but this is consistent with the after feeling of Aveda RM conditioner. The Suave conditioner is runny, but this is consistent with all Suave conditioners.
The pumps on the “salon bottles” pump out less product than the Aveda bottles to. It takes several more pumps of Suave conditioner to saturate my hair than Aveda, but overall it takes less Suave than Aveda to saturate.
After drying, the scent of the conditioner is covered by other products. You wouldn’t know I used Rosemary Mint after my hair is styled. It adds a pleasing amount of volume and a nice clean feeling.
Over all I am please with Suave’s Rosemary Mint shampoo and conditioner, with the exception of the scent of the shampoo, which could be much better and more true to the original Rosemary Mint.
the most comments here are really crap. There is plenty of choice in the pure organic cosmetics – and I mean pure. Try naturkosmetik in google, and you gonna find from Logona to Alverde (cheap) till Neal’s Remedies, Aquabio etc. Look at the INCI’s – tha is natural cosmetics, not such crap. On what planet are you living? Aveda is NOT a biological cosmetics company – if I am allowed to use European standards
CALL AVEDA! They can tell you where each and every one of those “chemical” words are sourced BEFORE you write an article based on assumptions. The products are naturally derived and certified organic. Have you ever looked up the difference between organic and “certified organic?” Did you know the cosmetic industry can claim a product is “all natural” when in actuality it only HAS to be 5% natural? The less expensive products are all water/ wax based, and you pay for what you get. Dont knock it ’till you try it…… Beauty is as Beauty does.
@Sasha – There is no such thing as “certified organic” Ammonium Lauryl Sulfate.