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“Fantastic shampoo. Have been using it ever since I discovered it, discarding all others. It did a wonderful job for me during the lockdown, three months with no glimmer of hope of seeing my hairdresser. Although I am tempted to try their other shampoos, I am so happy with this one that I am remaining faithful to it, at least for now.”
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“I like their products its the only shampoo that doesnt give me dandruff but they use too much plastic packaging I feel like Im killing whales every time I buy it. The only consolation is that it lasts for a while.”
Thank you for your review.
We have been aware of the need to reduce the quantity of plastics used in packaging for many years. In fact, the plastic tubes that we use have been gradually reducing in thickness and weight over the years and the ones we currently use are significantly lighter than those we were using 10 or 15 years ago.
The airless bottles and pumps that we use for most of our creams and lotions enable us to use lower levels of preservatives than we have to use if we packed the same products into tubes or jars. Preservatives, by their very nature, have varying degrees of toxicity and many of the more powerful types have negative impacts on the environment. By avoiding the use of these more powerful preservatives we are minimising the environmental impact of our products.
We are currently looking at sugarcane to be a promising alternative, this has already been rolled out in a few of our products and possibly all of them, eventually.
Some companies have gone down the route of using plastic made from post-consumer recycled material. The drawback with that material is that most flexible plastics (i.e. PE and PP) will absorb colours and odours from whatever it has previously been in contact with. For example, if plastic that had a previous life as a bottle of orange squash, the orange aroma will still be partly present when the plastic is recycled. Likewise, if the plastic was previously used to hold cosmetics, it may well carry the fragrance of the original product over to the new tube material. This is not only undesirable and unpredictable, it could cause huge problems with products claiming to be scent-free, as well as issues with the organic certification bodies.
On a similar vein, at least one company is using plastics containing a proportion of ocean plastic. Similar background odour issues could be experienced with this material, with the added complication that plastics that have been floating in seas and oceans for any length of time may have absorbed potential toxins. These toxins, which can range from organophosphates, petrochemicals, heavy metals and any number of other toxic substances, cause discolouration of the plastic (instead of being white or clear it becomes grey) and some of these toxic substances may survive the recycling process and be present in the newly created packaging. Again, this would cause big problems with the organic certification bodies, and potentially with consumer health.
We have discussed the potential for using biodegradable plastics for our products, but at the moment the technology does not give a shelf-life for aqueous products of greater than a few weeks.
Alternative packaging materials to plastic are few and far between. In the case of our products, glass is the only viable material that can be used, which would significantly increase product costs and transport costs, greatly increase the amount of protective packaging required, and would present possible health hazards in some instances (i.e. using glass bottles in baths and showers is not a good idea).
As you will see from all of this, there is not a lot of choice that we can make. On the positive side, with the exception of our toothpastes and sachets, all of the packaging we use is readily recyclable and there is no reason for it ever to go into landfill. It can be recycled and used in a wide range of new plastic products where the presence of background odours is not an issue. Unfortunately, as mentioned the materials used for the toothpaste tubes and sachets have to incorporate a layer of aluminium as the jam in a PE/PET sandwich in order to provide an effective moisture barrier. This aluminium layer means that the plastic cannot be recycled. The alternative for toothpaste tubes is to use straight aluminium tubes, but these have to be lined with a lacquer to prevent interactions between the metal and the toothpaste. In the past there were some natural lacquers available, but nowadays they are only available lined with Bisphenol-A, a synthetic resin that has been shown to have potentially harmful effects on health. As far as sachets are concerned, we have been in touch with our current filler and he has advised us that at the present time there is no viable alternative material available. There is a thicker, all plastic film on the market, but when used for aqueous products such as ours it will only give a shelf-life of a few weeks which is just not viable.
In summary we are well aware of the issues surrounding plastic packaging, but at the moment there is little in the way of alternatives. We will of course continue looking for suitable alternatives.
