Eco Preservative Blends and Their Component INCI Names

Somewhere between "we picked a natural-leaning preservative" and "we filed the CNF," a lot of makers hit the same wall: the bottle says Geogard or Leucidal, the technical sheet talks in trade language, and the Cosmetic Notification Form wants INCI names with real percentages. Trade names never appear on a filing. You have to map them to what is actually inside.

Why "natural" preservatives are usually blends, not single ingredients

Most of the preservative systems marketed toward naturals-leaning or "clean" formulators are not one molecule. They are combinations chosen to give broad-spectrum protection while allowing the brand to describe the product in softer language than "contains parabens." That marketing choice does not change your regulatory homework. A blend still has to be expanded into its true INCI components before it can be listed on a notification, and each component's real concentration in your finished product has to be calculated from the blend's use level.

Working through common examples

A widely used broad-spectrum blend in this category is often built around benzoic acid or dehydroacetic acid paired with a glycol carrier, sometimes with a small antioxidant or chelator added. A fermentation-derived antimicrobial line, often marketed under a name suggesting a radish or leuconostoc ferment, typically lists its INCI as some variant of Leuconostoc/Radish Root Ferment Filtrate, sometimes blended with lactic acid or a small amount of a co-preservative to widen the antifungal coverage, since ferment filtrates alone are often weaker against mold and yeast.

The details of any specific supplier's blend can and do vary by version and by supplier, so the rule that matters more than any single example is this: never file a trade name. Pull the actual technical data sheet or safety data sheet for your exact lot and supplier, find the composition breakdown, and use that.

A working table for common blend categories

Blend category	Typical INCI components you'll find	What to verify with the supplier
Organic-acid based eco blends	Benzoic Acid, Dehydroacetic Acid, Glycerin or a glycol, sometimes Sorbic Acid	Exact percentage of each acid, since these are the components most often Hotlist-restricted
Ferment filtrate blends	Leuconostoc/Radish Root Ferment Filtrate, sometimes Lactic Acid or a co-preservative	Whether a co-preservative is present and at what percentage, since ferment filtrate alone is rarely used as a sole preservative
Glycol-forward multifunctionals	Pentylene Glycol, Caprylyl Glycol, sometimes Phenoxyethanol	Whether Phenoxyethanol is present, since some product lines use it and some naturals-focused versions swap it out
Essential-oil-adjacent blends	Carrier oil or glycerin base plus a named essential oil constituent	Full allergen breakdown of the essential oil component, since these often carry Linalool, Limonene, or similar declarable constituents

The math you actually need

If a blend is used at 1% in your finished product and the supplier discloses that the blend itself is 40% Dehydroacetic Acid and 10% Benzoic Acid, your finished-product concentrations are 0.4% and 0.1% respectively, not 1% of either. This multiplication step is where filings go wrong most often, either because the filer files the blend's internal percentage as if it were the finished-product percentage, or because they file the 1% use rate against every component as though the whole blend were a single restricted substance.

Some botanical-derived components used in these blends, particularly ferment filtrates, may not have a clean CAS number at all. That is normal. Botanical extracts frequently lack one, and the INCI name itself is what gets listed. Do not force a CAS number onto an ingredient that does not have one just to fill a field.

Practical steps for your notification

Start by requesting the current safety data sheet from your supplier for the exact blend and lot you are using, and look at section 3 for composition. If the SDS does not give percentages (some suppliers are cagey about proprietary ratios), ask directly for a percentage breakdown suitable for regulatory filing purposes. Most reputable suppliers will provide this on request even if it is not printed on the public technical sheet.

Once you have the real components and percentages, check each one individually against the current Cosmetic Ingredient Hotlist, since more than one component in a "gentle" blend can carry its own restriction.

This expansion step, trade name in, real INCI components and finished percentages out, is exactly what Cosmetic Comply automates for a Canadian filing. It takes your supplier blend, works out the true concentration of each component in your recipe, and screens every one of them against the current Hotlist with a confidence score before a human reviewer checks the result. It does not replace reading your supplier's documentation, but it saves you from doing that multiplication by hand for every blend in every formula.