Pipette is widely considered a clean brand, particularly in the baby skincare space. All 18 of its products carry the EWG Verified seal, which is one of the strictest third-party safety standards available for personal care products. The brand excludes common ingredients of concern like synthetic fragrances, phthalates, and sulfates, and builds its formulas around a plant-derived version of squalane rather than the traditional shark-sourced alternative.
What EWG Verified Actually Means
The term “clean” in skincare has no legal definition, so third-party certifications carry more weight than marketing claims. Pipette’s entire product line holds the EWG Verified mark from the Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit that maintains one of the largest databases of personal care product safety ratings. To earn that seal, a product must score well on EWG’s overall hazard scale, avoid every ingredient on EWG’s “Unacceptable” list, and fully disclose all ingredients, including anything hidden under the umbrella term “fragrance.”
That last point matters more than it sounds. Many conventional brands list “fragrance” as a single ingredient, which can legally represent dozens of undisclosed chemicals. EWG Verified products cannot do this. If Pipette uses a scent, every component must be listed and evaluated individually.
The Squalane Difference
Pipette’s signature ingredient is squalane, a lightweight moisturizer that mimics a compound your skin already produces naturally. What sets the brand apart is how they source it. Traditionally, commercial squalane comes from deep-sea shark liver oil, which can carry environmental pollutants like PCBs, dioxins, and heavy metals that concentrate in the liver over time. Plant-based alternatives from olive oil can also contain impurities from processing, including plant waxes and free fatty acids.
Pipette’s parent company developed a fermentation process using common baker’s yeast fed with sugarcane. The yeast produces a precursor molecule that gets converted into squalane through a simple chemical step that mimics what happens in nature. Because the starting material is a high-purity hydrocarbon rather than an animal or plant extract, the final squalane is cleaner at the molecular level. It avoids pristane, a known skin irritant found at up to 0.1% in shark-derived squalane, along with the heavy metal contamination risk entirely.
Sustainability Practices
Pipette’s “clean” reputation extends beyond ingredients into packaging and shipping. The brand uses sugarcane-derived paperboard for its outer cartons, made from 100% sugarcane fiber (bagasse) rather than tree pulp. These cartons are fully recyclable and come from a rapidly renewable crop. For bottles and tubes, the brand uses post-consumer recycled plastic (PCR), meaning the packaging itself is made partly from previously recycled materials. Pipette acknowledges this is still a work in progress and has committed to increasing its PCR content over time.
Since 2020, the brand has also offered carbon-neutral shipping on all orders by funding reforestation projects to offset carbon dioxide emissions from delivery.
What “Clean” Doesn’t Cover
Pipette checks most of the boxes that parents look for in a clean baby brand: third-party safety verification, transparent ingredient lists, no synthetic fragrance, plant-based core ingredients, and sustainable packaging. The brand’s parent company, Amyris (a biotech firm), has stated that its technology platform enables “renewable and ethical sourcing of raw materials” with “minimal impact on sensitive ecosystems.”
One gap worth noting: Pipette does not appear to hold a Leaping Bunny cruelty-free certification, which is the gold standard for verifying that no animal testing occurs at any stage of production or supply chain. If cruelty-free certification is important to you, that’s worth confirming directly with the brand, as policies can change. The EWG Verified seal evaluates ingredient safety and transparency, not animal testing practices.
Overall, Pipette sits at the higher end of the clean baby skincare market. Its combination of EWG verification across every product, a genuinely novel approach to its core ingredient, and measurable packaging commitments puts it ahead of many brands that rely on vague “natural” or “clean” labeling without third-party backing.