What comes to your mind when you read the word ‘solid‘?
To me it is synonymous with reliable, dependable, trustworthy and of course not liquid – firm.
Any idea what am I going to talk about? It’s old and at the same time newborn, it’s trendy and quite environmentally friendly, it is for our beauty. So what is your guess?
You are right if you thought about soap.
When I started to travel just with cabin luggage I changed my shower gel/wash to solid soap bars and it was just because it was more practical. They took up less space and there were less things to leak all over my clothes. Later I got some tooth cleaning powder instead of tooth paste and it was for the same practical reasons. I never thought that I would go for shampoo bars, but with time I did.
As a child I never used shower gel simply because there was none of it in the shops, so we had to use bars of soap. I always thought that the soap makes my skin quite dry and so my memory of it was negative. At some point as I got older I became more open minded and of course the market became wider with more varied and better quality products. Nowadays buying solid cosmetic products comes with some other ideological benefits like being natural, ecological, environment friendly.
We like to believe that we are intelligent people and we do care about our planet. John is writing his awareness diary articles and I think that by choosing solid shampoo bars and soaps for washing we are taking one more thoughtful step into acting more responsibly and sustainably. Using good quality natural solid products help to reduce the environmental footprint of a happy bath experience, lower oil extraction and CO2 emissions, and less water used in production. There is also less waste, no plastic bottles and less packaging. As well as all of those great things our skin and hair feel great and I actually think that the quality of the products and the amount of time they last means that we are also saving money.
We are choosing natural products and trying to buy those that are locally produced when we can. Maybe the natural soap bars cost a bit more but they definitely last longer, it is comfortable to travel with them. They take up less space at the same time as saving the world because most companies stick with the environment friendly concept of little or no packaging and we can just buy the soap and put in our box directly.
Would I choose to use solid shampoo, conditioner and soap just to be friendly to the planet?
I am sorry I would not, I am not such a good person, because I like to have nice skin, nice and healthy hair. I choose to use these products because they are good. We choose carefully by reading ingredients, we investigate the benefits of each, we educate ourselves and we find the right ones that are good for us as well as being good for the planet.
Step by step, but making it solid!