9 Eco-Friendly & Sustainable Moisturizers For Naturally Nourished Skin
Skin care is the cornerstone of all beauty regimes—and what’s the cornerstone of skin care?
Moisturizing.
Which is exactly why it’s critical to find a sustainable moisturizer that works for both your skin type and the environment.
Considering moisturizer literally feeds our skin, we want to make sure we’re not feeding it anything toxic in plastic bottles—a la ingredients to avoid in skincare.
So, “How can I moisturize my face without chemicals?”. Good question.
To help you in your quest for smooth, soft, and sustainable skin, we’ve rounded up some of the best all-natural eco-friendly moisturizers around.
Everything we recommend to you on Sustainable Jungle is independently researched and we ask all brands to confirm their claims. To avoid waste, we test products on an as needed basis. This post contains affiliate links. If you buy something through our links, we may earn a small commission. Learn more about why we do this here.
The Best Sustainable Moisturizers For Sensitive Skin & Planet
Meow Meow Tweet products don’t compromise your skin barrier or animal welfare with their entirely vegan sustainable moisturizer line.
You won’t need to worry about unsustainable supply chains with Tap Tap Organics’ local and wild-harvested tropical formulations.
Ethique offers the best ethical moisturizer face bar for sensitive skin in a cardboard tube that’s as compostable as it is compact.
To absorb our process on how we chose the best vegan facial moisturizer brands, slip right down to the bottom or watch our video summary below.
The Full List Of Ethical & Eco-Friendly Moisturizer Brands
- Meow Meow Tweet | Visit Store
- Ethique | Visit Store
- Fat and the Moon | Visit Store
- Tap Tap Organics | Visit Store
- Good Juju Herbal | Visit Store
- Dab Herb | Visit Store
- MuLondon | Visit Store
- Conscious Skincare | Visit Store
- Meadowlark Botanical | Visit Store
1. Meow Meow Tweet
Meow Meow Tweet’s Vegan Sustainable Moisturizers
From creams and repair balms to spot serums and face oil, Meow Meow Tweet knows moisturizing.
While the whole range is impressive, their best eco-friendly non-comedogenic moisturizer has to be the antioxidant-rich Rosehip Chia Face Oil.
Its olive oil base provides a fast-absorbing and silky texture, while chamomile and ylang ylang extracts provide anti-inflammatory benefits as well as a soothing floral scent.
No matter what sustainable skin moisturizer you choose though, it’ll sooth dry skin with cold-pressed oils and cruelty-free natural ingredients.
Everything is gluten-free and palm oil-free, and only water-based preservatives that are certified safe and effective are used.
About Meow Meow Tweet
Meow Meow Tweet may be one of our favorite organic face cream brands, but moisturizing isn’t this Leaping Bunny-certified brand’s only specialty.
They also make small-batch hair care, oral care, cosmetics, and body care products—like zero waste deodorant.
Everything they make is zero waste, coming in either a compostable cardboard tube, reusable aluminum bottle, or glass jar.
Any containers (and plastic pump tops) can be sent back to MMT for recycling.
That’s not all, though. They’re actually plastic negative by funding plastic pollution recovery efforts in India through rePurpose Global.
They’re also Climate Neutral and charitably minded.
Also available on EarthHero
2. Ethique
About Ethique’s Sustainable Face Moisturizer Tubes
An Ethique paperboard lotion stick provides a no mess, no fuss way to feed your skin at home or on the go… all with absolutely zero waste!
The fragrance-free Quench does exactly what its name purports, but without a greasy to waxy film, thanks to lightweight coconut oil, sunflower oil, and ultra hydrating hyaluronic acid.
It’s best suited for oily to balanced skin, but Ethique’s other solid sustainable face moisturizers can tackle other dry skin types.
About Ethique
From dish soap bars to body wash and moisturizer, eco-friendly packaging comes standard with this zero waste beauty brand.
Their vast range of home and body products either take the form of a naked bar or a compostable cardboard tube.
All Ethique’s sustainable ingredients are naturally-derived, free from parabens, petroleum byproducts, palm oil derivatives, synthetic fragrances, and formaldehyde.
They’re not only certified cruelty-free, vegan, and Climate Neutral, but donate either 2% of revenue or 20% of profit (whichever is higher) to charity.
Ethique is also available on Amazon | Holland & Barrett (UK) | Nourished Life (AU)
3. Fat And The Moon
*Note: Some of Fat and the Moon’s eco-friendly lotion is vegan, but products like the All Cream and Aloe Lotion contain beeswax.
About Fat and the Moon’s Sustainable Moisturizers USA
Fat and the Moon offers several types of oil or face cream and body moisturizers, most of which are designed for multi-use across the body—hooray for minimalist and multi-purpose skincare!
The Aloe Lotion, for instance, can be used on the hands, face, and body, thanks to skin-friendly natural ingredients like aloe vera, sunflower oil, and coconut oil.
Just note the Aloe Lotion also includes beeswax.
Vegans should instead try their Moon Fat Clary Sage Bod Oil, which includes a super simple combination of just four organic ingredients: apricot kernel oil, jojoba oil, rosehip seed oil, and clary sage essential oils.
None of these glass-bottled options contain parabens, sulfates, phthalates, or toxins.
About Fat and the Moon
One of the best zero waste skin care brands, woman-owned Fat and the Moon offers a large selection of personal care “potions” that prioritize healing and “empowerment through self-care”.
All zero waste products are hand-made fresh to order in California, using only “plants that are abundant, ethically harvested and organically cultivated and combine them in formulations that are radically non-toxic”.
Each cruelty-free moisturizer is palm oil-free, mostly vegan friendly, and packaged in superfluous, reusable means.
They also support various charities and causes in their community like BlackTransWomen.org and The Okra Project.
4. Tap Tap Organics
*Note: Tap Tap Organics’ balms contain beeswax until they switch to a plant-based wax..
Tap Tap Organics’ Best Sustainable Facial Moisturizer
Chapped lips? Chafed legs? Cracking knuckles?
Tap Tap Organics can solve all your moisture problems with their small but complete range of cruelty-free moisturizers.
Their Head To Toe Beauty Butter is good for, well, head-to-toe moisturizing, making it one of the best eco-friendly moisturizers for any purpose.
It contains a powerhouse combo of entirely organic ingredients like coconut oil, cocoa butter, shea butter, avocado oil, and jojoba oil.
For something a little lighter, they offer beauty oils you can also use to repair your hair.
Whether you buy as needed or subscribe, you’ll never find parabens, petroleum, alcohol, or other harsh chemicals on your doorstep.
About Tap Tap Organics
A sustainable skincare brand hailing from the veritable green paradise of Costa Rica, Tap Tap Organics puts the “pure” in “pura vida”.
They focus on sourcing sustainable (organic or wild harvested) tropical ingredients from Central and South America only. For example, their virgin coconut oil is wild-harvested locally in Costa Rica.
The final sustainable beauty products are formulated in the USA.
While their product housing is reusable, they include a prepaid return label with all orders in case you’d prefer to send them back to be reused and recycled.
To further fight plastic waste, they support the 5 Minute Foundation.
5. Good JuJu Herbal
*Note: While Good Juju Herbal’s eco-friendly face moisturizer is vegan, a small number of their other products contain locally sourced beeswax.
About Good Juju Herbal’s Eco-Friendly Facial Moisturizer USA
Good Juju Herbal offers two cruelty-free facial moisturizers, but trust us, they’re all you need to sustainably soft skin.
The Whole Body Oil is a 6-in-1 non-greasy formula that can be used as a whole body moisturizer, bath oil, hot oil hair treatment, beard oil, aftershave, and makeup remover.
It keeps skin hydrated with only jojoba oil, nettle infusion, rosemary infusion, Ylang Ylang, and grapeseed oil.
The Herbal Skin Food is designed to finish off your skincare routine by coating the skin and locking in larger nutrient molecules that can’t actually penetrate the epidermis.
For that reason, it’s best used as an eco-friendly night moisturizer.
Both come packaged in reusable or recyclable glass bottles.
About Good Juju Herbal
Good Juju Herbal hails from North Carolina, USA.
Their various face masks, soaps, and scrubs are 100% natural and handmade by founder Judith.
Her sustainable ingredients are also cruelty-free, palm-oil free, and sourced from ethical and (ideally) local suppliers.
They power their workshop with solar panels and reuse almost all shipping supplies sent to them. For those they don’t, they separate and recycle them to make their internal office system as low waste as possible.
For some Do-Good Juju, Judith’s “Happy Skin Project” provides free and discounted soap to people in chemotherapy.
6. Dab Herb
About Dab Herb Sustainable SPF Moisturizer
Dab Herb is one of our favorite zero waste makeup companies, and what good would makeup be without healthy skin to put it on?
Dab Herb’s remedy is moisturizing makeup primer, sustainable tinted moisturizer, pressed serum, and body butters.
Each one is filled with nourishing, wholesome ingredients that are either organic or food-grade plant-derived, designed to improve skin health instead of cover up problems.
For the best eco-friendly face moisturizer with SPF, stop and smell and lightweight Petal Moisturizer and its anti-defying, pore minimizing, and sun-protective benefits.
Despite its tint, it’s free from Titanium Dioxide and mica, as well as emulsifying waxes, synthetic scents and dyes, and stearic acid.
It also doesn’t have any coconut oil (and thus Oleic Acid) so it’s non-comedogenic, meaning it won’t clog your pores.
For a sustainable night moisturizer, don’t snooze on the Night Recovery Serum. It combines avocado oil with many more oils in an ultraviolet filtering glass jar to help with shelf-stability without synthetic preservatives
While not all are UV filtering, they are all packaged in reusable glass, which you can send back for refills.
About Dab Herb
Dab Herb, with all their “Nature to Nurture” products, is a small cosmetics company with a huge range of products and an equally huge goal of standing as an advocate for green beauty.
All products are free from palm oil and animal byproducts, and they do not endorse animal testing of any kind, on their end or their suppliers.
They source from fair trade certified channels and actively support Made In A Free World, which provides solutions, rescue, and care to human trafficking victims.
Not only is Dab Herb’s packaging zero waste, but it comes in recycled shipping materials.
7. MuLondon
About MuLondon Eco-Friendly Moisturizers UK
MuLondon offers six different highly concentrated eco-friendly moisturizers in the follow scent blends:
- Rose, Rosehip, & Rosemary
- Lavender
- Marigold, Frankincense & Myrrh
- Hemp
- White Chocolate Truffle (YUM!)
Or, for a sustainable facial moisturizer sensitive skin readers can buy without fear, they offer a Fragrance-Free variety that skips the essential oils altogether in favor of just shea butter, cocoa butter, jojoba oil, and skin-soothing rosemary extract.
They’re 99% organic and water-free, which means they’ll help your skin use its own natural oils to moisturize as opposed to drying it out and making your skin dependent on the cream.
Safe to use on your face, hands, feet, bum, and tummy, they’re pretty much good for most moisturizing needs.
About MuLondon
MuLondon is a skincare specialist brand that focuses entirely on moisturizers and cleansers, which are all made in London.
They’re not just a Certified B Corp, but bear additional accreditation and sustainability certifications from Choose Cruelty Free, Leaping Bunny, Soil Association, and The Vegan Society.
They also give back through their 1% For The Planet membership.
8. Conscious Skincare
About Conscious Skincare Sustainable Facial Moisturizers UK
Conscious Skincare offers a huge range of eco-friendly day and night moisturizers and cold-pressed botanical oils, all organized by skin type, so you find the perfect primer for your sustainable moisturizing routine.
For the best sustainable face moisturizer, you can’t beat the Organic Face Serum’s ultrarich combination of rosehip oil, evening primrose oil, carrot seed oil, avocado oil, and calendula oil.
Other healing products contain ingredients just as nourishing, such as Fair Trade shea butter and organic cocoa butter.
The face oils come in recyclable fully aluminum bottles, while the creams and serums come in reusable glass jars.
About Conscious Skincare
Based in Wales and founded by the lovely Rebecca, Conscious Skincare is one of the most impressive brands we’ve come across.
Across their range of eco-friendly toiletries, everything is certified by PETA, Leaping Bunny, Ethical Consumer, and the Vegetarian Society.
Plus, each purchase helps their mission to support animal rescues and shelters.
They’ve put a huge amount of thought and care into their glass and aluminum packaging to ensure it’s recyclable, going so far as to offer refills on certain products.
You can choose whether you’d like a plastic pump top, and they encourage you to reuse your first top each time you need to replenish your skincare stash.
Conscious Skincare has featured in an article on body wash refills
9. Meadowlark Botanical
About Meadowlark Botanical’s Vegan Moisturizers
Despite their small size, Meadowlark Botanical offers a complete line of body butters, hand creams, face creams, facial repair serums, and shimmer tinted face creams.
To give you an idea of some of the clean and non-toxic ingredients included in these products, we’ll use their Daily Green Face Cream as an example.
It combines skin (and actual) superfoods like spirulina, spinach, and green tea with soothing aloe vera and white willow bark. Notice how each one is recognizable.
Products are entirely vegan, cruelty-free, and palm-oil free, as well as mostly mineral free.
They do offer eco-friendly tinted moisturizer, which contains ethically-sourced cosmetic grade mica powder.
About Meadowlark Botanical
Meadowlark Botanical was founded by master level Reiki healer and holistic health advocate Jessica Yaw.
This was shortly after her diagnosis of a rare autoimmune disorder that caused her to break out in hives after using most beauty products.
Jessica started experimenting in her own kitchen, and her skin started clearing up within days of using her own creations.
While her product range has expanded significantly—natural dry shampoo anyone?—they’re still made in her Ohio home using as many locally sourced or globally fair trade ingredients as possible.
Her “Always Vegan” products are guaranteed free from synthetics, palm oil, gluten, soy, dyes, parabens, fragrance, and preservatives.
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How We Found The Best Sustainable Moisturizer Brands
There’s a lot to consider when shopping for skincare.
Is this face moisturizer suitable for your combo skin type? Is it an eco-friendly moisturizer with SPF (a huge time saver for those who spend lots of time outdoors)? Does it have anti-aging benefits? Will it clog your pores?
And that’s before we get to the rest of our ethical and sustainable beauty criteria:
- Non-toxic: We want to keep skin healthy without alcohol (which is dehydrating so WHY is it in so many moisturizing products?), synthetic dyes, fragrances, petrochemicals, parabens, or sulfates. Natural skin care ingredients (i.e. aloe vera, shea butter, olive oil, and essential oils) are better for dry skin anyway.
- Vegan
- Cruelty-free
- Palm oil free: Or RSPO-certified.
- Ethical ingredient sourcing
- Thoughtful packaging: Zero waste is always what we look for, meaning it’s reusable, refillable, compostable, or at least recyclable. This means no plastic bottles.
Final Thoughts On Eco-Friendly Moisturizer
There are so many “eco-friendly” moisturizers on the market these days.
It’s finding the truly green ones—who won’t just stain your skin with greenwashing—that’s tricky.
With that in mind, we hope one of these sustainable moisturizers will provide you with that smooth, dewy complexion.
And if so, consider sharing it with friends and family who could use a little food for their skin in a way that is safer and more sustainable for everyone.
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Sadly, the only moisturizer with SPF here is a tinted one. So tired of folks assuming we all want to change the color of our faces or wear foundation, ugh! Have yet to find a plastic-free moisturizer with SPF that is NOT tinted…help a woman out here!
Oh no! Hopefully this article will be helpful: https://www.sustainablejungle.com/zero-waste/zero-waste-sunscreen/
Thanks for the info about conscious skincare. Am really happy to be here
Great article. I love REN products normally, they are cruelty free and clean skin, but will definitely give the Earth Tu Face Vegan Face Serum a go!
I don’t understand one thing. People are obsessed with cruelty free but are okay with companies having animal derived ingredient in the product. So it’s okay for them to have tortured animal ingredient added to the product as long as it’s not tested on animals? People have gotten it so wrong, when they should be concentrating on Vegan and cruelty free products.
Asta Smidt, I agree 1000%!
Yay! Many thanks for the kind words about your MuLondon Fragrance Free Moisturiser. We’re so happy you’re enjoying it. Big hugs from London! ✌