What World Vegan Month
Has to Do With Your Bathroom
Most people connect veganism to food. Open your bathroom cabinet and the question gets a lot bigger.
World Vegan Day is November 1, and the whole month of November is World Vegan Month. The Vegan Society started the tradition in 1994 to mark its 50th anniversary, and it has grown into a yearly moment for people to look at what they buy and ask a simple question: did an animal pay for this?
Most people answer that question in the kitchen. They swap the milk, read the chocolate label, try the oat creamer or Beyond Burger. That is a good start. But the question does not stop at the fridge door.
Walk into your bathroom and open the cabinet. The soap, the shampoo, the toothpaste, the lotion, the lip balm, the razor cream. Every one of those products has an ingredient list, and a surprising number of them include something that came from an animal. Even more were tested on animals somewhere along the way, either the finished product or one of its ingredients.
This post is about that second half of veganism, the part that lives in your cabinet. We will cover where animal ingredients hide in personal care, why ingredient names make them hard to spot, what Leaping Bunny certification actually promises (and what it does not), and how we built Me Mother Earth to be vegan all the way through.
Where Animals Hide in Your Bathroom
Animal ingredients in personal care are rarely called what they are. Nobody prints "cow fat" on a bar of soap. They print sodium tallowate. Here are the ones that show up most often.
| On the label | What it usually is | Where you find it |
|---|---|---|
| Sodium tallowate, tallow | Rendered beef or sheep fat | Conventional bar soap |
| Lanolin | Grease from sheep's wool | Lip balm, hand cream, hair products |
| Beeswax, cera alba | Wax from beehives | Lip balm, balms, some deodorants |
| Honey, royal jelly, propolis | Products of the hive | Face masks, lotions, lip care |
| Carmine, CI 75470, cochineal | Crushed cochineal insects | Red and pink lipstick, blush, some toothpaste |
| Keratin | Ground hooves, horns, feathers, or wool | Shampoo, conditioner, hair treatments |
| Collagen, elastin | Animal connective tissue, often bovine or fish | Face serums, moisturizers |
| Guanine, CI 75170 | Fish scales | Shimmery nail polish, eyeshadow, highlighter |
| Silk powder, silk amino acids | Boiled silkworm cocoons | Shampoo, face powder |
| Casein, whey, lactose | Milk proteins and sugars | Bath milks, lotions, soap |
| Gelatin | Boiled animal skin, bones, and connective tissue | Capsules, some face masks |
| Shellac | Resin secreted by the lac insect | Nail polish, hair spray |
| Ambergris, musk, civet | Animal scent secretions | Traditional perfumes |
Two things stand out in that list. First, several of these are hiding behind numbers or Latin names, so you would never catch them without looking them up. Second, the most common one of all, tallow, is in the product most people assume is harmless: a plain bar of soap. Tallow has been the base of commercial soap for over a century because it is cheap and makes a hard bar. It is still in many of the biggest brands on the shelf.
If your bathroom was stocked without checking labels, there is a good chance at least a few of these are in there right now.
Why the Label Alone Cannot Tell You
The harder problem is ingredients that can come from either a plant or an animal, and the label does not say which. The same word covers both sources.
This is why "I read the label" is not enough. For a lot of ingredients the only way to know is for the brand to tell you, and the only way to trust that is a brand that has committed to vegan sourcing across every product and every supplier, not just the ones that are easy.
It is also why a brand saying "vegan" should mean something specific: no animal derived ingredients, and no animal derived versions of ambiguous ingredients, verified with suppliers.
What Leaping Bunny Certification Actually Means
You have probably seen the little bunny logo on packaging. Many bunny logos exist, and some of them are just artwork a brand designed itself. Leaping Bunny is different. It is run by the Coalition for Consumer Information on Cosmetics (CCIC), a group of animal protection organizations that set one shared standard in 1996 so shoppers would not have to decode every brand's private definition of "cruelty free."
To carry the Leaping Bunny logo, a company has to meet all of the following:
No animal testing at any stage. Not on the finished product, not on the formulation, and not on individual ingredients. This is the part most self made bunny logos skip: a brand can honestly say "we don't test on animals" while buying ingredients from suppliers who do.
Supplier monitoring. The company must get written assurance from every ingredient supplier that no animal testing was done, and must keep that system current as suppliers change.
A fixed cutoff date. The company commits to a specific date after which no animal testing occurs anywhere in its supply chain, and that date never moves forward.
No animal testing required by law in any market. The company cannot sell in a market where regulators require animal testing of its products.
Annual recommitment. Certification is not a one time stamp. The company signs the pledge again every year.
Independent audits. The company agrees to let Leaping Bunny audit its supplier records to confirm the claims hold up.
That is a real standard with real paperwork behind it, and it is why we went through the process at Me Mother Earth rather than drawing our own rabbit.
What Leaping Bunny does not mean
Here is the part that surprises people. Leaping Bunny does not certify that a product is vegan. It certifies that no animals were tested on. A lip balm made with beeswax and lanolin can be fully Leaping Bunny certified as long as nobody tested it on a rabbit.
So "cruelty free" and "vegan" are two separate claims answering two separate questions:
Was this tested on animals?
Verified by Leaping Bunny, including every ingredient supplier.
Is anything from an animal inside it?
Verified by the brand's own sourcing, ingredient by ingredient.
A product can be one without the other. The bathroom you actually want is both.
The Gap Most Brands Fall Into
Once you know the two claims are separate, you start seeing the gap everywhere.
A big beauty brand launches a "vegan" line, and the ingredients really are free of animal products. But the parent company sells in markets that require animal testing, so the line is vegan and not cruelty free.
A small handmade soap company says "we never test on animals," and they mean it. But their lip balm is beeswax and their soap is superfatted with lanolin. Cruelty free, not vegan.
A third brand prints its own bunny, writes "cruelty free" on the front, and buys ingredients from suppliers it has never asked about testing. Neither claim is backed by anything.
None of these companies are necessarily lying. In the United States, "cruelty free" and "vegan" are not legally defined terms for cosmetics, so each brand gets to decide what it means by them. That puts the work on you unless the brand has done it for you and can show its receipts.
That is the standard we hold ourselves to: both claims, backed by a third party where a third party exists, and backed by our own sourcing records where one does not.
Me Mother Earth Is Vegan All the Way Through
When we started Me Mother Earth, we made a rule before we made a product: nothing we sell comes from an animal, and nothing we sell is tested on one. Not most products. All of them, across the whole catalog, from the soap to the dish brush. Here is what that looks like in practice.
Formulas. Our soaps are built on plant oils, not tallow. The glycerin in them is the glycerin that forms on its own when plant oils are turned into soap, not a bottled additive of unknown origin. Our balms and body care use plant waxes and butters, never beeswax or lanolin. Our toothpaste tablets contain no carmine, no gelatin, and no milk derived ingredients.
The tools, not just the liquids. Veganism in the bathroom is bigger than what is in the bottle. Traditional "boar bristle" hairbrushes and shaving brushes are exactly what they sound like. Many brushes and toothbrushes still use animal hair. Our bamboo toothbrushes use bristles derived from castor oil, and our hairbrushes and body brushes are animal free as well.
The ambiguous ingredients. For every ingredient that could go either way, we confirm the source with our supplier before it goes into a product. The vegan claim on our label covers the glycerin, the stearic acid, and the fatty alcohols, not just the obvious things.
Third party verification. Me Mother Earth is Leaping Bunny certified, which means the no animal testing commitment extends to every ingredient supplier, is backed by a fixed cutoff date, and is open to audit. We recommit every year.
Packaging. Our products ship plastic free. This matters to the vegan conversation more than it first appears, since plastic pollution in the ocean is one of the largest ongoing harms to marine animals, and we partner with rePurpose Global and 5 Gyres to work on exactly that.
We are a small company and we are honest about what that means. We cannot claim perfection on every front, and we do not. But vegan and cruelty free are two places where we can say the whole line meets the standard.
A Ten Minute Bathroom Audit for World Vegan Month
You do not need to throw everything out. Use up what you have, then replace it with something better. Here is how to find out where you stand.
Pull everything out of the cabinet and the shower. Soap, shampoo, conditioner, toothpaste, floss, deodorant, lotion, lip balm, makeup, razors, brushes.
Scan each label for the obvious ones. Tallow or sodium tallowate, lanolin, beeswax, honey, carmine or CI 75470, keratin, collagen, silk, guanine, gelatin, shellac.
Flag the ambiguous ones. Glycerin, stearic acid, squalane, lactic acid, and most fatty acids. If the brand does not say "vegan" on the label or its website, assume you do not know.
Check the brushes. Hairbrush, shaving brush, makeup brushes, body brush. "Boar" or "badger" bristles are animal hair. "Natural bristle" on a label usually means the same thing.
Look for a real certification. A Leaping Bunny logo you can verify on the CCIC website means no animal testing. For the vegan claim, look for the Vegan Society trademark or a brand that states vegan sourcing for its full catalog.
Make a short list. Whatever did not pass, write it down. That is your replacement list for the next few months, one product at a time as each one runs out.
Most people who do this find three to five products that surprise them. The bar soap and the lip balm are the usual suspects.
Veganism Does Not Stop in the Kitchen
World Vegan Month is a good excuse to take the question you already ask at the grocery store and carry it one room over. Did an animal pay for this? For a lot of what is in the average bathroom, the honest answer is yes, and the label will not tell you.
Me Mother Earth started with a focus on plastic. Once we learned more, we saw that plastic is tied to other environmental problems, including animal agriculture and animal abuse. So we made it our commitment that our products would exploit neither animals nor the planet. That is why every product is vegan, every product is Leaping Bunny certified, and every package arrives plastic free. You read the label once, trust it, and get on with your morning.
This November, start with one product. Finish the bar you have, then pick a vegan one. Finish the floss, then switch. One cabinet at a time is how every vegan and sustainable bathroom gets built.
The Products You Never Have to Wonder About
Every Me Mother Earth product is vegan, Leaping Bunny certified, and shipped plastic free. Free US shipping on orders over $55.
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