Is Tattoo Ink Vegan: This Is How You Can Tell Vegan and Non-Vegan Ink!
As a vegan, you quickly learn that the world depends heavily on animals or animal by-products. Everything seems to be made from animals; from the food we eat to the things we wear.
You also quickly learn that it can be pretty difficult, and in some cases almost impossible to find vegan alternatives to non-vegan products. Luckily, the world has recognized the need to support vegan needs as well, and generally start turning away from the animal, to plant-based production.
Almost every major industry in the world has either gone vegan or provides vegan alternatives; that is why you can nowadays buy a vegan shampoo, vegan meat, or even buy vegan clothes. But, what about tattoo ink? Has the tattoo industry joined the vegan movement, and how can you get tattooed as a vegan?
These are the important questions we’ll try to answer in the following paragraphs. So, without further ado, let’s get started!
Tattoo Ink Ingredients – Explained
Before we get into the topic of the vegan tattoo, we first need to understand the need for vegan ink. Now, as you may know, tattoo ink generally contains a lot of animal by-products. For example, the standard ingredients of a regular tattoo ink contain;
- Bone char – used to increase or saturate the pigment
- Animal fat glycerin – used as a pigment carrier
- Hoof gelatin – also used as a pigment carrier
- Crushed beetle shells – used as ink binder
- Cod liver oil
- Beeswax
In order to create a tattoo ink, manufacturers used things like iron oxide, logwood, cinnabar, cadmium, witch hazel, ethyl alcohol, and many more other chemical ingredients. It is essential to mention that the majority of the ingredients used to create anything, from black to red ink, are pretty much toxic and contain heavy metals. And, of course, alongside these ingredients, there are the animal by-products used to either enhance the pigment or to act as pigment carriers.