The Low Waste Trails: Haircare Bars

Originally published in February 2020.

Over the past year or so, my passion and interest in Sustainability has grown and grown. Well, in my bid to live a more Zero Waste lifestyle, I’ve began to dip into lots of various swaps to products I usually would use day-to-day. I wanted to start this little mini-series to document the swaps that work and the ones that may have fallen short. Today, I wanted to talk about Haircare Bars, which are package free (well they came in a simple recyclable cardboard box) and made of natural ingredients. I’ve been trailing them over the past month now, with a total of around 10/12 hair washes (I’ve also been attempting to not wash my hair as much when I shower too, hence the small number of washes!) and I’ve well and truly been on journey..

I’ll cut straight to the point with this; they didn’t work for me. Despite hair wash after hair wash, using them as the directions says, staying longer in the shower to work more water through my hair; they simply didn’t work and left my hair insanely waxy once dry. It’s such a shame really as I was so hopefully and persisted with them, but I had to admit defeat!

Over the past year or so, my passion and interest in Sustainability has grown and grown; you may  have noticed this with the odd post on here! Well, in my bid to live a more Zero Waste lifestyle, I’ve began to dip into lots of various swaps to products I usually would use day-to-day. I wanted to start this little mini-series to document the swaps that work and the ones that may have fallen short. Today, I wanted to talk about Haircare Bars, which are package free (well they came in a simple recyclable cardboard box) and made of natural ingredients. I’ve been trailing them over the past month now, with a total of around 10/12 hair washes (I’ve also been attempting to not wash my hair as much when I shower too, hence the small number of washes!) and I’ve well and truly been on journey..

I’ll cut straight to the point with this; they didn’t work for me. Despite hair wash after hair wash, using them as the directions says, staying longer in the shower to work more water through my hair; they simply didn’t work and left my hair insanely waxy once dry. It’s such a shame really as I was so hopefully and persisted with them, but I had to admit defeat!

I have read up online, in various places, that it can take up to 5 washes for your hair to adjust, with it being said the hair has to adjust to natural product as it is so used to shampoos full of chemicals; so it over produces oil. Which I had, but after 10 washes and I’m still unable to have hair down as it looked actually wet it was so fully of producted and waxy – you have to draw the line.

I genuinely write this with so much dissapointement as I was incredibly hopeful that hair bars would be my next Sustainable swap and could ditch the plastic shampoo bottles for good – but for now I’ll have to hault that. Of course, this isn’t the end of the road, as I understand this purely could be down to the specific brand not working for my hair type, with a friend of mine suggesting Lush shampoo bars to be excellent, so I am planning on picking some of them up! There also is the alternative of Zero Waste shops having refill Shampoo/Conditoner stations that I may try my best to go to one and stock up with some big glass jars…

To sum up, I have not lost complete faith in Shampoo and Conditioner bars, but for transparency, this time they didn’t work for me! For you reading who may think you would like to give them a ago, I highly suggest you do as they are an incredible way to cut out both plastic and chemicals ending up in our oceans – as these bars are made of completely natural ingredients!

So for now, I’m back to the Tresemme, but I’ll be sure to be back soon with another shampoo bar purchase and review, but hopefully next time with ones my hair actually agrees with!