This week Elise Catterall looks at Lush shampoo bars and how they've helped her family make environmental progress and cut back on packaging.

As part of our ongoing journey to reduce the waste produced by our household of 4 + 1 (two adults, two kids, one dog), we have embraced a motto that I have seen doing the rounds on social media: To choose progress over perfection. This has been an important shift for me, because it is so easy to be swept into inaction when you feel overwhelmed by the extent of the waste problem (when you see those harrowing images of sea life choked by plastic bags, for example).  

Adopting this mindset means acknowledging that even the smallest behaviour or habit change is a good one, and that ensures constant forward movement. So, whilst we won’t be zero waste anytime soon, we are definitely striving towards that and making positive steps every day. We may not yet be perfect, but we are definitely better than we were yesterday and last week and last month, and, definitely, last year.

One of the positive steps we have taken recently has been switching to shampoo bars over bottled shampoo.  This has been an amazing success – so much so that we’ve been doing little happy dances each time we wash our hair!  (I might be exaggerating slightly – it could just be me doing the dancing.) We bought our shampoo bars from Lush on the premise that they would not only work as well as (or better than) bottled shampoo but they would be far better value for money. And so far, so true! These bars are basically just a million tiny pieces of concentrated shampoo all squished together, so every time you lather them up (and they lather up beautifully), you are releasing shampoo from each little piece.  You then just use that lather on your hair like you would regular shampoo. The beauty of this design is that, because of the huge surface area, each bar will last and last – up to 80 washes per $15 bar, the equivalent to 2 or 3 bottles of shampoo. We also picked up the accompanying bar of hair conditioner and are also happy with that.  It is a bit harder to lather up, but like with normal hair conditioner, you don’t need too much anyway. The best part? Our hair is definitely as happy, if not happier, than with our bottled product. And they take up far less room. One caveat - you need to take care to leave them out of water when you are done. If they stay in a puddle on the shower floor, or keep getting wet from shower spray, they will slowly dissolve. So, this swap out has been a very easy, positive change for us and will be a permanent one. It has to be said that Lush is a great source of bathroom and body products that are packaging free. Next on our shopping list from them will be their body scrub and massage oil bars. I’ll keep you posted!

If you want to try shampoo bars for yourself, you can grab them from Lush like we did (we tried Jason & the Argon oil and Seanik) or you can find others at low waste online retailers like Biome.

Disclaimer: This article does not constitute an official endorsement of any of the products mentioned within.

See you next week! - Elise

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