Sustainable Shampoo
If you’re just here for the recipe, here you go, as promised.
Basic Sustainable Shampoo recipe:
½ cup Bronner’s
½ cup water
1-2 t of baking soda
(optional: 10-20 drops essential oils or 1t coconut oil)
So what’s the problem with store-bought shampoo? Well, a lot of it is full of junk that is pretty awful for your body, it almost inevitably comes in a nonrecyclable plastic bottle, and, in my opinion, it generally costs too much for something that frequently has water listed as the first ingredient.
At one point during this hectic summer, I found myself completely without shampoo. My options were to wash my hair with goat soap or try to concoct something with Dr. Bronner’s.
Side bar: if you aren’t familiar with Dr. Bronner’s, you should be. You will be seeing it in a lot of my recipes. It’s an all in one organic, fair trade soap with no synthetic preservatives. You really can use it for anything – or rather you can use it as a base for anything.
My husband has used it as shampoo all by itself. I can assure you the results are not quite as successful as he thinks they are. It tends to leave a waxy residue on the hair and you have to rinse for. ever. After hunting around the internet for recipes and finding a few that required coconut milk or jojoba oil, neither of which I had on hand, I managed to find the above basic formula that kept popping up in a few places.
I mixed this all together in a recycled creamer bottle and it worked like a charm for me. My hair was light and bouncy and I could actually go a day or two between washings, which has never really been an option for me with conventional shampoo. The problem is that it all depends on your hair type, how hard your water is, and the time of the year. This recipe, without any of the added oils, worked great for me this summer. As soon as the humidity went down, it made my hair way too dry. The beauty of it, however, is that you can keep tweaking it as needed. Change the scent, increase the baking soda, or go nuts with the jojoba if you wish.
Two notes about this recipe: make sure you rinse well to avoid irritation from the baking soda. If your hair is more treated or simply a bit on the finicky side, you’ll want to follow up with an apple cider vinegar rinse and probably use a deep conditioning treatment (just use coconut oil -another frequent ingredient of mine) once a week or so.
That said, I don’t use it all the time. Earlier this year, I discovered a shampoo bar that I absolutely love by Dulse Rugosa. They have a few options that all come in a biodegradable paper wrapper, the ingredients are amazing, and they’re local for us.
My husband loves the Ramblin’ Bar, I prefer the Lovely Rita. The price can seem a bit steep for what you’re looking at, but it works great and lasts a lot longer than your standard bottle of shampoo. For those of you who aren’t feeling the DIY chemistry experiment of making your own, I definitely recommend checking them out. They also have a ton of other great products that are great for you and the environment.