Bar Shampoo Review

In my continued effort to reduce, reuse, and recycle I've turned to bar shampoo.

Shampoo that comes in bar form has the advantage of smaller packaging and, generalizing here, the ingredients are more e-co friendly. They don't need additional chemicals to keep it in liquid form, so there are less ingredients than other gel forms.

I was a bit skeptical at first because I imagined taking a bar of Dial to my head and scrubbing. Fortunately, that's not the way it works. My favorite shampoo is Blondie by Lush. It almost melts in your hands, in fact I keep it in a small tupperware container to prevent shower water from using it all up. You choose how much you want by how much you lather onto your hands, same as a normal shampoo.

The only reason I switched to JR Liggett's was because I was out of Blondie and Lush products are international while JR Liggett is produced in New Hampshire. The ingredients of both products are pretty global, I suppose there's no real way around that yet (even the early colonists had to import soap or lye for soap), but I wish I could find something made from top to bottom within the U.S.

Liggetts isn't quite as nice as Blondie. It's harder to work the bar into a lather, and after shampooing it feels like my hair is almost too clean. It definately feels like it strips everything off of my hair. The advertisment says that most people don't need conditioner. I don't know who they think they're fooling, I need twice the conditioner just to get a comb through my hair. Of course, I have very fine hair that tangles easily. I do have to admit that after conditioner my hair looks pretty good though.

I still think I'll go with Blondie next time. It may be international, but so is JR Liggett if you discuss the ingredients, and I can choose exactly how much I want (they cut a bar for you in the store). Packaging is even more minimal since I can choose to not have it wrapped and bring my tupperware along. I'm not sure I'll ever go back to liquid shampoo.

http://www.lushusa.com/shop/products/hair/solid-shampoos

http://www.jrliggett.com/