The Big Zero Waste Shampoo and Conditioner Bar Review 2020 | Natural, Zero Plastic Hair Care
The Setup
What are the Brands? We reviewed: Lush [shampoo + conditioner], HiBAR [shampoo + conditioner], DuJardin [shampoo], Public Goods [shampoo], Bar None [shampoo + conditioner], Kitsch [shampoo + conditioner] and byHumankind [shampoo + conditioner].
What’s Your Impact? US consumes almost 1 billion bottles of shampoo and conditioners per year. We think the number is higher, because these numbers assume 2 bottles of shampoo per person per year.
For us: We wash and condition our hair every 2-3 days, which means we would remove close to 5 or 6 plastic bottles from the landfill every per year.
Why switch to shampoo and/or conditioner bars? In addition to removing the plastic bottles from landfill, bars of shampoo and conditioner tend to have fewer ingredients and tend to be more natural.
The Money: Public Goods has the cheapest bar of shampoo at $5.50 and Kitsch has the best duo shampoo + conditioner bundle.
The Ingredients: DuJardin probably has the fewest ingredients (though scattered on the website). Because DuJardin is a soap-like shampoo, you will need an acidic rinse (diluted vinegar or lemon) in order to restore your hair to its natural pH.
The Shampoo + Conditioner Set at HiBAR looks like it might be the next most limited/‘clean’ in our opinion, and contains ingredients that match the level of pH of your hair — therefore this shampoo no acidic rinse required. See the grid below for a breakdown on other ingredients.
The Feel: To level set, we wash/condition every 2-3 days and have long, straight-ish hair. HiBAR left our hair feeling the best, with Kitsch as the close second.
The Scent: [Admittedly, heavily subjective.] We like some lingering scent but not overwhelming/strong: Kitsch wins here, as we described in our post as elegant and charming. Aside from Lush, most others had very subtle scents. We also liked the creamy scent of Bar None.
The Rinse: Soaps or saponified hair soaps require a diluted acidic rinse to restore the pH balance in your hair. Since hair is slightly acidic, the hair shaft is then smoothed out, detangled, and left read for conditioner. Public Goods, DuJardin, byHumankind, and Lush are in this category. Of these, DuJardin is probably our favorite because of how easy the rinse takes to the hair afterward as well as the bar’s limited ingredients.
Kitsch, HiBAR, and Bar None seem to act more like solid shampoos that have not required a acidic rinse — great for those that want to be plastic free and don’t want to add time to their shower routine.
Note: We liked Bar None’s shampoo and conditioner a lot (full review upcoming) and its scent was light and soft. However, this bar ships from Australia. So, probably not the greenest if you live in the US!
In Pictures
Cost Breakdown
The Money Report: Individually, the Public Goods Shampoo is the cheapest shampoo we’ve tried (we haven’t tried Chagrin Valley yet). Bar None has the cheapest bar of shampoo but note that does not include shipping, which is $10. Kitsch Conditioner is the next cheapest. Kitsch’s bundle is also the cheapest when considering a shampoo and conditioner duo.
We're on a mission to reduce our personal carbon footprint with small, hopefully easy, changes in our home to fight against climate change. This means we're looking for products that may be all natural, ideally zero waste, reusable or compostable -- while still being affordable!
