Why Live Testing Matters
Skincare products are a very real threat to the delicate ecosystems within our planet’s waters–and we need to develop products with as much certainty as possible, so they absolutely will not hurt the creatures and ecosystems they come into contact with.
We stand behind our formulas when we say that they are ecoconscious, reef-safe, coral-safe, lake-safe, and stream-safe. We know this because we’ve done the hard testing and we can say that our products will not harm marine life. We are very passionate about this point.
We are adamantly against animal testing where there are in vitro alternatives. At this time, however, there are no cellular cultures or models to replicate aquatic toxicity testing We applied the best practices and methods we could to reduce the number of fish used in testing.
Transparency
We realize that testing on fish and coral may turn some people away from our products. We completely understand and respect that position — there is nothing you can say that we haven’t said ourselves.
If there were proven alternative testing methods that didn’t include live fish or coral, we would be using those instead. But our reefs that get up to 14,000 metric tons of sunscreen annually can’t wait for that sort of testing to be developed. We are doing what we can, now, to help lessen our impact in the long run.
To be clear, we are not continuously testing. We have not tested in a long time. Once we determine it is safe, there is no need to test an ingredient again. Mike Malterre, the Vice President, likes to say “an average seafood restaurant throws away more leftover fish each night than we have ever tested on.”
I am very proud that we offer the only product line that has been tested and proven safe for freshwater fish, saltwater fish, C. elegans and coral larvae. Even though I wish there was a way to prove safety without harming fish, there isn’t yet, and we learned that just because an ingredient is safe for us does not mean that it is safe for our aquatic friends. If we hadn’t tested our products, I would have put formulas on the market with natural, clean ingredients that would have harmed our waters. Many other brands out there are doing just that by slapping a ‘reef safe’ logo on their package without any real data to back up the claim. After taking every viable precaution, Stream2Sea products will be true to our claims – even if it means we will take some heat for doing so.