Another weekend, another campsite, and the showers are wonderfully hot but without that camping-shower essential – a little shelf for the washing necessities. But that’s ok because my Shine shampoo tin is just the perfect size to balance on a water pipe. Handy or what!
Shampoo in a tin, you ask? Well of course, because we all need, inescapably, to reduce our plastic waste. According to campaigners Surfers Against Sewage, one mammal or sea bird dies every 30 seconds due to plastic pollution, while each of us in the UK creates 177kg in packaging waste every year. That’s three of me.
Six months ago I banned plastic hand wash bottles from our house and reverted to good, old-fashioned soap bars (sorry, not sorry, Strawberry Laces-loving teens). The next logical step is shampoo bars… but are they actually any good?
The answer, on every level, with Shine shampoo bars is YES, absolutely. When my bar arrives – prettily ensconced in recyclable cardboard, of course – I’m wary of its stone grey, rough texture. But, then, oh the scent! Now I am partial to a nice bit of lemon; lemon tea, lemon candles, lemon car freshners, and the citrusy aroma of Shine is gorgeous. Call me easily won over, but there are some things you don’t have to think twice about taking into the shower with you.
The bar quickly whips up much more of a lather than I have any expectation of and – the real test with my hair – a thorough wash leaves my hair tangle-free for the Big Comb. In the name of research, I try out a few other shampoo bars and quickly realise how clever Shine’s design is. Rectangular bars are surprisingly hard to work with your hands to create a lather, but the round Shine bar does the job with ease. And when one of those other shampoos leaves my hair in a sticky mess, I’m saved by Shine really doing what it says on the tin.
The Shine bar was created by Jonathan Harries, a hairdresser with more than 30 years’ experience and owner of the Shine salon in Brighton. Jonathan says: “I knew many of my clients would find the convenience of a shampoo bar appealing and are always looking for ways to reduce their plastic consumption. But as a hairdresser, it was important to me that there was no compromise on the results of a professional liquid shampoo. I had to create something that I would be happy to use in the salon.”
As a result, the Shine bar contains quinoa to help prolong the life of hair colour and is gentle enough to be used every day by the whole family. There’s no plastic and no mess, while the reusable storage tin makes it perfect for travel (no taking it through baggage), the gym and, of course, camping. It’s 99% naturally derived and perfect for vegans – it’s only tested on people!
At £9.50 for a 75g bar, it’s not a cheap option but our family of three (well, at least two of us… I can’t vouch for the regularity of one teen’s hair washing activity) has been using the bar for more than a month and it’s still going strong. Shine’s claim is that it lasts up to four times longer than standard shampoo and, at our rate, this seems about right. The teen who does regularly wash hair has sniffed her way through initial suspicions to declare that it’s actually ‘quite good’; high praise indeed from one hooked on Aussie Miracle Treatment.
Now I just need all my lovely friends and family to READ THIS ahead of the next round of (*coughs*) birthdays and Christmas, and shops being stacked to the rafters with ever-so attractively but very definitely plastic-y packaged gift sets. This little family of three (possibly two) can’t save the world on our own, you know, and I’m ever so partial to a camp-tastic tin.
