Certification Decoder: What EWG VERIFIED, MADE SAFE, Leaping Bunny, COSMOS, B Corp, GOTS and FSC Actually Mean

There are seven or eight logos that turn up on the back of a well-meaning product, and most of us read them as a general sign of good news.

They're not the same thing, though. Each one checks something different, and some are checked far more carefully than others. The gap between what a label promises and what shoppers assume it promises is where most of the confusion lives.

A few examples of what we mean:

• A leaping bunny tells you nothing about whether a product is safe.

• A B Corp logo on a shampoo bottle tells you nothing about the shampoo.

• "COSMOS Natural" can mean the product contains no organic ingredients at all.

None of that makes these labels useless. Several are genuinely rigorous, and we use them ourselves when deciding what to stock. But they work better when you know what each one is for.

The short version

Now the detail.

EWG VERIFIED

Who runs it: The Environmental Working Group, a US nonprofit.

What it checks: One specific product formula. To qualify, it has to avoid EWG's list of banned ingredients and score in the green band of their Skin Deep database. The brand also has to show it follows good manufacturing practices.

Its best feature: full ingredient disclosure. US law lets a company hide an entire fragrance formula behind the single word "fragrance." EWG VERIFIED brands can't — they have to publish what's in it. That genuinely goes beyond what the law requires.

What it doesn't check: animal testing, organic content, whether the product works, or working conditions. Despite the organisation's name, it isn't really about environmental impact either — the focus is human health.

How it's checked: EWG reviews the paperwork itself. There's no required factory visit and no mandatory independent lab test, though EWG can test products at random.

The honest caveat: EWG's ingredient science is disputed by a lot of chemists. The main criticism is that Skin Deep rates ingredients by how harmful they could be, without paying much attention to how much is actually in the product. The chemist Michelle Wong put it well: a meal with a cup of salt in it is very different from a meal with a pinch, but a system like this rates salt the same either way. EWG also earns commission on products it links to, including some it rates badly. And it writes the standard and checks compliance with it, with no outside body verifying either.

EWG's response is that the mark can't be bought — a product either meets the criteria or it doesn't — and that its commission income funds research.

Our read: Very good for transparency. Treat the safety scores as one informed opinion, not settled science.

MADE SAFE

Who runs it: Nontoxic Certified, a US nonprofit. It has been expanding into offering consulting alongside certification, which is worth noticing — advising and certifying the same companies is the kind of overlap we flag elsewhere in this article.

What it checks: The ingredients in a finished product, screened against a long list of banned and restricted chemicals. It covers personal care, cosmetics, mattresses, furniture, textiles, household goods and more. Unlike EWG, the screen also looks at harm to wildlife and waterways, not just people.

What it doesn't check: animal testing, labour, organic content, whether the product works, or packaging. Lab testing is optional rather than standard.

How it's checked: In-house scientists review ingredient documents and supply chain paperwork. No factory visit, no outside accreditation body. The organisation says its banned list is stricter than the EU, FDA and EPA lists combined — that's their claim rather than an independent finding, but the published criteria are certainly demanding.

The cost, which is the real story here. MADE SAFE is the one scheme that publishes all its prices, and they're striking. Screening a single product costs $300 to $2,500. Annual licensing starts at $6,000 a year for a brand turning over $100,000 to $499,000.

Do the maths on a brand doing $150,000 a year. That's four percent of everything it earns, before a single product has been screened. It's a very clear illustration of why a careful small maker might have no certifications at all.

Leaping Bunny

Who runs it: A coalition of eight animal protection nonprofits in the US and Canada.

What it checks: One thing, and it does it properly. No animal testing on the finished product, the formula, or any individual ingredient — at the company, its factories, or its suppliers — after a fixed cut-off date that can't be moved. Companies have to collect signed declarations from every supplier, right down to raw materials.

What it doesn't check — and this is the biggest gap on the list between what people assume and what's actually certified:

• Nothing at all about ingredient safety.

• Not vegan. Leaping Bunny says so outright. Animal-derived ingredients are allowed, as long as they weren't tested on animals.

• Not environmental impact, organic content or labour.

• A certified brand can be owned by a parent company that does test, as long as it runs separately. Leaping Bunny discloses this rather than refusing the brand.

How it's checked: Better than the alternatives. Certified companies must agree to independent audits of their supplier records, and auditors inspect stock at random to confirm ingredients came from the suppliers named. There's no lab test that can prove something didn't happen in the past, so paperwork is the only method available — and theirs is thorough. Renewed every year.

Cost: Free to apply in the US and Canada, then a one-off logo fee of $500 to $4,500 depending on size. Cost isn't the barrier here; the paperwork is.

Leaping Bunny is not PETA's bunny

The two logos look alike. They're not equivalent.

Under PETA's programme, a company signs a legally binding statement that it and its suppliers don't test on animals. That's a real commitment — but there's no independent audit behind it. It's a self-declaration.

Leaping Bunny requires the supplier monitoring system, the signed declarations, openness to audit, and yearly renewal.

Both are promises. Only one is checked.

One more thing worth knowing: the phrase "cruelty-free" has no legal definition in the US. The FDA says so directly, and notes that companies use it inconsistently — some cover only the finished product while suppliers test ingredients, some rely on tests done decades ago. Twelve states now ban selling cosmetics tested on animals, but there's no federal ban and those state laws have exceptions. Which is why the certification still tells you something the law doesn't.

COSMOS (Organic and Natural)

Who runs it: A Brussels-based nonprofit set up by five European organic certifiers, including Ecocert and the Soil Association. The actual inspections are done by paid certification bodies.

What it checks: The whole formula and the factory. Both grades require approved ingredients and processes, no GMOs, no parabens or phthalates, no synthetic colours or fragrances, a limit on petroleum-derived content, packaging rules, and no animal testing.

Here's the difference almost nobody knows about:

• COSMOS ORGANIC requires 95% of the processed plant-based ingredients to be organic, and at least 20% of the whole product (10% for things you rinse off).

• COSMOS NATURAL has no organic requirement whatsoever. A product with zero organic ingredients can carry it. The Soil Association states this plainly.

Two similar-looking seals from the same scheme, and one of them guarantees nothing about organic content. If you remember one thing from this article, make it that.

It's also worth understanding why COSMOS Organic's 20% figure sounds so low. Water makes up most of a typical formula, and water can't be organic. So an organic shampoo being "10% organic" isn't a trick — it's just how the maths works.

How it's checked: The strongest of the beauty schemes here. It requires both a paperwork review and an on-site inspection, with a yearly audit and the possibility of unannounced visits.

What changed in 2025: COSMOS updated its rules on 1 September 2025 to stop counting water and minerals in the organic percentage, since neither can be certified organic. The effect is dramatic: a cream that used to say "20% organic" can now say "57% organic" without changing a single ingredient. It's arguably a fairer way to count. But if you notice organic percentages jumping on products you already buy, that's why.

Our read: Properly rigorous checking. Its weakness is the labelling, not the auditing.

B Corp

Who runs it: B Lab, a nonprofit. It's not a government-recognised body, and says so.

What it checks: the company, not the product. This is the most misunderstood label here. A B Corp seal on a bottle of shampoo tells you something about the business that made it. It tells you nothing about the shampoo — not the ingredients, not animal testing, not organic content.

Under new standards published in April 2025, companies have to meet a minimum bar in seven areas: governance, climate, human rights, fair work, environment and circularity, equity and inclusion, and public engagement. Previously they could collect points, so doing well in one area could cover for doing badly in another. That loophole is now closed.

How it's checked: Much better than it used to be. Companies self-assess, then an approved independent assessor verifies it. Companies earning 1% or more of their revenue from fossil fuels, gambling, pornography, prisons, tobacco or weapons are now excluded outright.

Cost: Published and scaled to revenue — $2,100 a year for a company under $5M, up to $52,500 at the top of the published range. Worth noticing the shape of that: a billion-dollar company pays a far smaller share of its revenue than a small one does.

The honest caveat: B Corp has been criticised for certifying subsidiaries of large multinationals. When Nespresso was certified in 2022, other B Corps signed an open letter of protest. In February 2025, Dr. Bronner's — one of the highest-scoring B Corps ever — publicly dropped its certification, saying B Lab had failed to require proper independent checks on big multinational supply chains. The new standards are a real tightening. Whether they settle that particular argument is still being debated.

Our read: A real signal about how a company is run. Not a signal about any one product.

GOTS (Global Organic Textile Standard)

Who runs it: A German nonprofit set up by four organic and textile organisations, including the US Organic Trade Association. Audits are carried out by independent accredited bodies.

What it checks: The whole journey from fibre to finished garment. It bundles together three things most schemes keep separate:

• Organic content. "Organic" means at least 95% certified organic fibre. "Made with organic materials" means at least 70%.

• Factory chemicals. Every chemical used has to be pre-approved. PFAS, formaldehyde and several flame retardants are banned outright. Wastewater has to be treated.

• Worker conditions. Rules on forced and child labour, union rights, health and safety, living wages, discrimination, and protections for migrant workers.

How it's checked: the most demanding here, alongside FSC. Yearly on-site audits plus unannounced visits, traceability checks, random chemical residue testing, and social audits that include private interviews with workers and checks on payroll and age records.

The honest caveat: In a major fraud in India, cloned certificate QR codes let roughly 20,000 tonnes of conventional cotton into the certified supply chain. Two things are worth saying about that. It's a serious failure. And — this genuinely sets GOTS apart — their own surveillance audits caught it, not an outside investigation. They traced and cancelled the affected certificates and added permanent authenticity checks.

Note too that GOTS doesn't certify the farm itself. It relies on farm-level organic certification done by someone else.

2026 update: A new version released in April 2026, compulsory from March 2027, adds stricter PFAS limits, carbon reporting, microfibre shedding standards, protections for workers in extreme heat, and rules that let certified items stay certified when repaired or resold.

FSC (Forest Stewardship Council)

Who runs it: A nonprofit governed by three groups with equal voting power — environmental, social and business — including Indigenous Peoples' organisations. Audits are done by independent accredited bodies.

What it checks: That a forest is managed to FSC's rules, and that certified wood is tracked separately as it moves through factories and distributors.

The label difference that matters:

• FSC 100% — everything came from FSC-certified forests.

• FSC Recycled — entirely recycled material.

• FSC Mix — the one you'll actually see most. It can contain a large share of "FSC Controlled Wood," which is not certified as well-managed. It's only been screened to rule out the worst sources: illegal logging, rights violations, destruction of high-value forest, clearing natural forest, and GM trees.

So FSC Mix means "not from the worst sources." It doesn't mean "from a well-managed FSC forest."

The honest caveat, and it's the most serious here. An investigation in October 2025 estimated $10–30 billion of fraudulently certified goods sold each year. A former FSC integrity director has said 20–30% of claims were false during his time there; FSC disputes that. The underlying problem is real: there's no central system matching how much certified timber goes into supply chains against how much certified product comes out. So a company can sell more FSC product than it buys FSC wood. Most confirmed fraud cases in recent years were spotted by outsiders, not by FSC's own systems.

At its General Assembly in October 2025, members passed a motion to build a digital tracking system to close exactly that gap. It's a real commitment, but a slow one — a roadmap due around the end of 2027, a vote on making it compulsory in 2028, and implementation targeted for 2030. So the weakness is acknowledged and being worked on. It isn't fixed.

The "organic" trap in US cosmetics

This one catches almost everybody.

For food, "organic" is legally regulated in the US. Label a food organic and you have to be certified.

For cosmetics, the FDA doesn't define or regulate the word at all. USDA only has authority over products that contain farmed ingredients and make a USDA organic claim.

What that means in practice: a cosmetic can say "organic" on the front of the pack without anyone having checked — as long as it doesn't use the USDA seal, doesn't claim USDA compliance, and isn't otherwise misleading. A food generally can't.

So if you've learned to trust the word "organic" from the grocery aisle, be careful carrying that trust into the beauty aisle. Look for the actual USDA seal or a COSMOS Organic mark, not the word on its own.

And a line from the FDA worth keeping in mind: an ingredient's source does not determine its safety.

Why good brands sometimes have no labels

Put the costs side by side and a pattern shows up.

Leaping Bunny and B Corp are within reach of a genuinely small maker. The per-product schemes often aren't. And the three that don't publish their fees are the ones where a founder can't even work out whether it's affordable without getting on a sales call.

So: no label doesn't mean something's wrong. Plenty of the small, family-run makers we work with meet or beat these standards and simply can't justify four percent of their revenue to say so on a box.

How we use all this

We treat certifications as useful evidence, not the whole answer.

A GOTS or COSMOS Organic mark tells us an independent auditor has actually been on site. A Leaping Bunny mark tells us the supply chain has been mapped properly. Where a brand has no certifications, we ask the questions ourselves: full ingredient disclosure, where it's made, what the packaging is, and what happens to the product at the end of its life.

Every product we stock goes through the same process. If you ever want to know why a particular one is here, just ask!