Essential Care Gentle Herb Shampoo Review

Typical price:

£9.50

We like:

No nasties; that it's hand-made; the recycled bottle

We don't like:

The thin consistency; the lack of lather

SmartPlanet judgement:

We love the purity of this shampoo and that there's no need to use a conditioner. As Margaret Weeds once told us herself: "If you use a good shampoo, you shouldn't need to use a conditioner". However, its lack of spreadability is quite a big drawback for us. And it hardly foams. Maybe that's a sign of its wholesomeness, but we're still suckers for a bit of foam.

Score:

Contact:

Nice Car Company at http://www.essential-care.co.uk/
Telephone: 44 (0)1638 716 593

If you believe, like we do, that you're not just what you eat, but also what you put on your skin, you can't do much better than this shampoo.

As the world's first organic-certified shampoo (Soil Association stamp, no less), it's the ultimate chemical-free wash and makes us feel incredibly wholesome -- inside and out. But it does require practice and quite big amounts of the shampoo to make sure all your hair gets the treatment, which can be expensive if you have longer locks.

While it's made one of our team's long hair look healthier than it ever did before and definitely does its cleaning job properly, it might not be a shampoo for fans of gloss and volume. It doesn't promise to make your hair look like Sarah-Jessica Parker's, which we find refreshing, but while some chemical-ridden products might actually get close to that, this one just doesn't.

But if ethics, health and sustainability are more you than glittery glamour, you can't go wrong with Gentle Herb Shampoo.

Essential Care is a tiny family-run company and Margaret Weeds, who created all the formulations, has been working with herbal medicine and aromatherapy since the 80s. The company doesn't test on animals -- it uses willing human volunteers instead -- and told us it received the RSPCA small business award in 2006 for its animal welfare policies. All the products are made by hand in Suffolk.

Essential Care has really thought about every aspect of every single product, right from the certified organic ingredients Weeds uses in the formulations to the refillable, recycled and recyclable packaging, all of which is manufactured in the UK or in Europe.

Score breakdown:

 

Read more reviews of green and ethical products at www.smartplanet.com