world amenities Combo Makeup Remover Wipes ingredients (Explained) (2025)

Read more on how to read an ingredient list >>

Alcohol Free

Antioxidant: Vitamin E

Skin-identical ingredient: Glycerin

Soothing: Aloe Extract

Other Ingredients

Propylene Glycol

What-it-does: moisturizer/humectant, solvent | Irritancy: 0 | Comedogenicity: 0

• It's a helper ingredient that improves the freeze-thaw stability of products
• It's also a solvent, humectant and to some extent a penetration enhancer
• It has a bad reputation among natural cosmetics advocates but cosmetic scientists and toxicology experts do not agree (read more in the geeky details section)

Read all the geeky details about Propylene Glycol here >>

PEG-7 Glyceryl Cocoate

What-it-does: emulsifying, surfactant/cleansing

A clear, light yellow water-lovingoil that comes from coconut/palm kernel oil and glycerin. It's a mild cleansing agent popular in baby washes and sensitive skin formulas.

It's also a so-calledsolubilizer that helps to dissolve oils and oil-soluble ingredients (e.g.essential oils or salicylic acid) in water-based formulas.

Polysorbate 60

What-it-does: emulsifying, surfactant/cleansing

Castor Oil Hydrogenated Ethoxylated

What-it-does: perfuming

Chlorhexidine Digluconate

What-it-does: antimicrobial/antibacterial, preservative

Methylparaben

The most common type offeared-by-everyone-mostly-without-scientific-reason parabens. It's a cheap, effective and well-tolerated ingredient to make sure the cosmetic formula does not go wrong too soon.

Apart from the general controversy around parabens (we wrote about it more here), there is a 2006 in-vitro (made in the lab not on real people) research about methylparaben (MP) showing that when exposed to sunlight, MP treated skin cells suffered more harm than non-MPtreated skin cells. The study was not done with real people on real skin but still - using a good sunscreen next to MP containing productsis a good idea. (Well, in fact using a sunscreen is always a good idea. :))

Phenoxyethanol

What-it-does: preservative

It’s pretty much the current IT-preservative. It’s safe and gentle, but even more importantly, it’s not a feared-by-everyone-mostly-without-scientific-reason paraben.

It’s not something new: it was introduced around 1950 and today it can be used up to 1% worldwide. It can be found in nature - in green tea - but the version used in cosmetics is synthetic.

Ethylhexylglycerin

What-it-does: preservative, deodorant

If you have spottedethylhexylglycerinon the ingredient list, most probably you will see there also the current IT-preservative,phenoxyethanol. They are good friends becauseethylhexylglycerincan boost the effectiveness of phenoxyethanol (and other preservatives) and as an added bonus it feels nice on the skin too.

Also,it's an effective deodorant and a medium spreadingemollient.

Bronopol

What-it-does: preservative

Laureth-7

What-it-does: emulsifying, surfactant/cleansing

Glycerin - superstar

Also-called: Glycerol | What-it-does: skin-identical ingredient, moisturizer/humectant | Irritancy: 0 | Comedogenicity: 0

• A natural moisturizer that’s also in our skin
• A super common, safe, effective and cheap molecule used for more than 50 years
• Not only a simple moisturizer but knows much more: keeps the skin lipids between our skin cells in a healthy (liquid crystal) state, protects against irritation, helps to restore barrier
• Effective from as low as 3% with even more benefits for dry skin at higher concentrations up to 20-40%
• High-glycerin moisturizers are awesome for treating severely dry skin

Read all the geeky details about Glycerin here >>

Iodopropynyl Butylcarbamate

What-it-does: preservative

It's one of those things that help your cosmetics not to go wrong too soon, aka a preservative. Its strong point is being effective againstyeasts and molds, and as a nice bonus seems to be non-comedogenic as well.

It is safe in concentrations of less than 0.1%but is acutely toxic when inhaled, so it's not the proper preservative choice for aerosol formulas like hairsprays. Used at 0.1%, Iodopropynyl Butylcarbamate has an extremely low rate of skin-irritation when applied directly for 24 hours (around 0.1% of 4,883 participants) and after 48 hours that figure was 0.5%, so it counts as mild and safe unless your skin is super-duper sensitive.

Tea Seed Extract

Aloe Extract - goodie

Also-called: Aloe Leaf Extract;Aloe Barbadensis Leaf Extract | What-it-does: soothing, emollient, moisturizer/humectant

The extract coming from thejuice containing leaves of the Aloe vera plant. It's usually ahydroglycolicextract (though oil extractfor the lipid parts also exists) that has similar moisturizing, emollient and anti-inflammatory properties as the juice itself. We have written some more about aloe here.

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 >>

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!).