When it comes to beauty, most people have set products that they rely on for everyday and special occasion events, but no matter how committed you are to the products and brands that you usually use, it is worth considering a switch to greener products that make less of an impact on the Earth and can be equally good for you.

Your personal style may drive consumption of just a few cosmetics. But even if you consider yourself to be "low maintenance," you likely use many everyday products to take care of yourself. Here are just a few:

* Toothpaste
* Shampoo
* Conditioner
* Hair styling product(s)
* Body soap
* Hand soap
* Sunscreen
* Body lotion
* Hand lotion
* Face lotion
* Deodorant

In short, most people use more than 10 beauty products per day. An additional 5-10 products are added if you use makeup, and of course there are countless other options on the beauty aisle.

These beauty products can impact the health of our environment by: utilizing toxic ingredients; using non-recycled and difficult-to-recycle packaging; using toxic pesticides and herbicides on ingredients; and testing products on animals, to name just a few of the drawbacks.

If you changed just a few of your beauty products to greener options, you could reduce the strain on the Earth while simultaneously decreasing your exposure to toxic ingredients.

Unfortunately, it can be surprisingly difficult to determine which products are truly "green," versus those that are merely labeled as such. Some of the labels that we naturally look for when searching for green options include:

* Eco-safe
* Environmentally preferable
* Green
* Organic
* Pure
* Natural

Unfortunately, according to the Consumers Union, these general claims are completely meaningless. First of all, the manufacturer or marketer creates the label based on what will sell best, but there isn't any independent organization verifying that the label claim is accurate. Secondly, there is a broad range of factors involved in using terms like "organic" or "green," making them, in fact, very loose terms of attribution. Finally, often a very tiny amount of "natural" ingredients is mixed with chemicals to produce many of the products that we believe are safer for our bodies and the environment.

Toxic chemicals that are bad for the Earth as well as our personal health are sold every day. This is because no independent or government entity is assigned to testing all the products that you can buy, whether at the drugstore or a high-end department store counter. In other words, the manufacturers can put whatever they want in their products and nobody tests them for safety. That's right: while your medications are tested by the FDA, your cosmetics are not.

One of the words we look for most on "green" products is "organic," but in fact the term is not regulated on personal care products as it is on food products. In other words, for food, suppliers must be certified by the USDA National Organic Program to label a product "organic," but in personal care, that is not the case.

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