Organic Shop Makeup Remover Melting Balm Gentle Cleanser ingredients (Explained) (2025)

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Alcohol Free

Antioxidant: Tocopherol (Vitamin E)

Skin-identical ingredient: Squalane

Other Ingredients

Helianthus Annuus (Sunflower) Seed Oil - goodie

Sunflower does not need a big intro as you probably use it in the kitchen as cooking oil, or you munch on the seeds as a healthy snack or you adore its big, beautifulyellow flower during the summer - or you do all of these and probably even more. And by even more we mean putting it all overyour face as sunflower oil is one of the most commonly used plant oils in skincare.

It’s a real oldie: expressed directly from the seeds, the oil is used not for hundreds but thousands of years. According to The National Sunflower Association, there is evidencethat both the plant and its oil were used by American Indians in the area of Arizona and New Mexico about 3000 BC. Do the math: it's more than 5000 years – definitely an oldie.

Polyglyceryl-3 Diisostearate

Glyceryl Stearate

What-it-does: emollient, emulsifying | Irritancy: 0 | Comedogenicity: 1

A super common, waxy, white, solid stuff that helps water and oil to mix together, gives body to creams and leaves the skin feeling soft and smooth.

Chemically speaking, it is the attachment of a glycerin molecule to the fatty acid calledstearic acid. It can be produced from most vegetable oils (in oils three fattyacidmolecules are attached to glycerin instead of just one like here) in a pretty simple, "green" process that is similar to soap making. It's readily biodegradable.

It also occurs naturally in our body and is used as a food additive. As cosmetic chemistColins writes it, "its safety really is beyond any doubt".

Polyglyceryl-10 Oleate

Cera Alba (Beeswax)

Also-called: Beeswax | What-it-does: emollient, viscosity controlling, emulsifying, perfuming | Irritancy: 0 | Comedogenicity: 0-2

It's the yellow, solid stuff that you probably know from beeswax candles. It's a natural material produced by honey bees to build their honeycomb.

As for skincare, it's used as an emollient and thickening agent. It's super common in lip balms and lipsticks.

Polyglyceryl-3 Cocoate

What-it-does: emulsifying

Polyglyceryl-4 Caprate

What-it-does: emulsifying

Polyglyceryl-6 Ricinoleate

What-it-does: emulsifying

Polyglyceryl-6 Caprylate

What-it-does: emulsifying

Citrus Aurantium Amara (Bitter Orange) Flower Water*

It's the flower watercoming from the flowers of bitter orange (which is the sister of the sweet orange we all know and eat). In general, flower waters (also called hydrosols) arediluted versions of essential oils coming from the same plant. They contain the same components but in far less of a concentration.

So - similar to its essential oil big sister- orange flower water contains a lot of fragrant components and has a nice, sweet scent. It has some skin toning properties and can help to relax the body.

If your skin is super sensitive, it's a good idea to choose products without fragrant floral waters.

Squalane - goodie

What-it-does: skin-identical ingredient, emollient | Irritancy: 0 | Comedogenicity: 1

It seems to us that squalane is in fashion and there is a reason for it. Chemically speaking, it is a saturated (no double bonds) hydrocarbon (a molecule consisting only of carbon and hydrogen), meaning that it's a nice and stable oily liquid with a long shelf life.

It occurs naturally in certain fish and plant oils (e.g. olive), and in the sebum (the oily stuff our skin produces) of the human skin. As f.c. puts it in his awesome blog post, squalane's main things are"emolliency, surface occlusion, and TEWL prevention all with extreme cosmetic elegance". In other words, it's a superb moisturizer that makes your skin nice and smooth, withoutbeing heavy or greasy.

Tocopherol (Vitamin E) - goodie

• Primary fat-soluble antioxidant in our skin
• Significant photoprotection against UVB rays
• Vit C + Vit E work in synergy and provide great photoprotection
• Has emollient properties
• Easy to formulate, stable and relatively inexpensive

Read all the geeky details about Tocopherol here >>

Parfum (Fragrance) - icky

Exactly what it sounds: nice smelling stuff put into cosmetic products so that the end product also smells nice. Fragrance in the US and parfum in the EU is a generic term on the ingredient list that is made up of 30 to 50 chemicals on average (but it can have as much as 200 components!).

If you are someone who likes to know what you put on your face then fragrance is not your best friend - there's no way to know what’s really in it.

Also, if your skin is sensitive, fragrance is again not your best friend. It’s the number one cause of contact allergy to cosmetics. It’s definitely a smart thing to avoid with sensitive skin (and fragrance of any type - natural is just as allergic as synthetic, if not worse!).

Citrus Aurantium (Bitter Orange) Peel Oil - icky

The essential oil coming from the rind of the orange (thesweetone). In general, the main component of citrus peel oils is limonene(83-97% for sweet orangepeel), a super common fragrant ingredient that makes everything smell nice (but counts as a frequent skin sensitizer).

Other than that, citrus peelalso contains the problematic compoundcalled furanocoumarin that makes them mildly phototoxic. Orange peel contains less of it than some other citruses (like bergamot or lime), but still, be carefulwith it especially if it is in a product for daytime use.

Juniperus Virginiana (Cedarwood) Oil

Limonene - icky

What-it-does: perfuming, solvent, deodorant

A supercommon and cheap fragrance ingredient. It's in many plants, e.g. rosemary, eucalyptus, lavender, lemongrass, peppermint and it's the main component (about 50-90%) of the peel oil of citrus fruits.

It does smellnice but the problemis that it oxidizes on air exposure and the resulting stuff is not good for the skin. Oxidizedlimonene cancause allergic contact dermatitis and counts asa frequent skin sensitizer.

Linalool - icky

What-it-does: perfuming, deodorant

Linalool is a super common fragrance ingredient. It’s kind of everywhere - both in plants and in cosmetic products. It’s part of 200 natural oils including lavender, ylang-ylang, bergamot, jasmine, geranium and it can be found in 90-95% of prestige perfumes on the market.

The problem with linalool is, that just like limoneneit oxidises on air exposure and becomes allergenic. That’s why a product containing linalool that has been opened for several months is more likely to be allergenic than a fresh one.

A study made in the UK with 483 people tested the allergic reaction to 3% oxidised linalool and 2.3% had positive test results.