The Body Shop Shea Bath and Shower Cream Review

Typical price:

£6

We like:

The Community Trade shea butter; the anti-animal testing stance; the moisturising properties

We don't like:

The overload of fragrance ingredients; that it doesn't make you feel sparkling, shiny clean

SmartPlanet judgement:

We're starting to get used to the fact that The Body Shop uses some dubious ingredients in its products (in this case fragrance ingredients), but except for that this bath and shower cream is everything we would expect from a Body Shop product: well-performing, quite a few ethical credentials and some natural ingredients. It's not overly impressive, but it is a very good mainstream product.

Score:

Contact:

Nice Car Company at http://www.thebodyshop.co.uk
Telephone: +44 (0)1903 731 500

The Body Shop's Shea Bath and Shower Cream is everything you'd expect from the ethical body care retailer that essentially pioneered the notion of ethical consumerism to the mainstream. With The Body Shop's strong no animal-testing policy and Community Trade initiative, the shower cream quickly racked up ethical points the company is known for.

It contains shea butter, sesame oil and sunflower oil, all of which have moisturising properties. And they definitely do the job. We found that there's no need to moisturise at all after using the Shea Bath and Shower Cream and we love that. But the downside is that it's so creamy it doesn't feel like it cleanses, even if it claims to. This is okay every once in a while, but sometimes you just want to feel super clean. Our conclusion is that it would be fine for busy days when you don't have time to moisturise, but not for those post-gym scrub sessions.

We really appreciate the natural ingredients mentioned above and that the shea butter is Community Trade -- The Body Shop's own 20-year-old system that ensures producers in the developing world get paid fairly. But there are also quite a few ingredients we're unhappy with. For example, most natural body care companies shun the cheap surfactant sodium laureth sulphate, which is a skin irritant and one of the main ingredients in this product.

It's also loaded with fragrance ingredients like linalool, coumarin, butylphenyl methylpropional, geraniol, eugenol and parfum, which we'd rather be without. Don't get us wrong, the scent is nice, but we could live with an earthier smell if that meant we didn't have to worry about dubious ingredients.

What does calm us down a bit is the assurance that none of the ingredients nor the finished product has been tested on animals. The Body Shop is famous for its anti-animal testing work. And while many consumers turned their backs on The Body Shop after Anita Roddick sold it to cosmetics giant L'Oréal -- which has a very poor track record with regards to animal testing and general un-green behaviour -- we feel The Body Shop has done enough on the ethical front to make it worthy of our thumbs-up. Besides campaigning against animal testing, it has also supported a great variety of charities and set up the multi-million-pound Body Shop Foundation.

We look forward to the day The Body Shop gets just as green as it is ethical. Pledging to become a carbon-neutral retailer by 2020 is a good start, but not nearly enough if you ask us. Shun the pseudo-natural ingredients, Body Shop, pay attention to the green details and keep making good products.

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