February 20

Published by Panetary Health Initiative on 20/02/202220/02/2022

Saying no to plastic shampoo bottles

Despite all the viable alternatives, and my ongoing attempts to minimise single-use plastics, until today I’ve still continued to use shampoo in throw-away plastic bottles.

Mark Twain once said:

“Habit is habit, and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed down-stairs one step at a time.”

I observed from the sidelines as ABC Radio Announcer Richard Glover even stopped using shampoo altogether fourteen years ago:

I decided I would make myself a guinea pig. On radio, I idly suggested others may care to join me. In the end, 523 listeners signed up to the deal: we agreed not to use shampoo for six weeks, recording in a dairy the impact on our hair. At the end of the process, we would assess whether our hair was better, worse or the same.

Many quoted the central thesis of the Sydney experiment: shampoo is just a detergent designed to strip the oil from your scalp, which in turn encourages your scalp to pump out more oil to replace what has been lost. Hold off with the detergent and your scalp will find its own natural balance.

In the end, 86 per cent of our fluffy, shiny-haired guinea pigs reported that their hair was either better or the same. (Richard Glover, SMH, Dec. 11, 2017)

I was tempted to join them, but my hair anxiety was simply too great, and I was certain that after 6 weeks of trauma I’d be one of the 14 per cent who wouldn’t be able to claim their hair was better or the same.

Then a dear friend suggested I use shampoo bars, and even gifted me a sample pack, but I couldn’t quite take the step … I think I was still worried about whether I’d get enough ‘volume’, having been brainwashed by years of advertisements (and my hairdresser) flogging the miracle of shampoo.

Today my new action was to finally call it quits with plastic shampoo bottles and move to a conditioning shampoo bar. My delight is beyond description … after all these years of anxiety the shampoo bar is even better than the shampoo I was using. It’s a delightfully scented one that is vegan, palm oil and sulphate free, and claims to provide the same amount of shampoo as 6 bottles in one simple bar! And I was able to ‘LOVE LOCAL’ and buy it just around the corner.

The next step of hair liberation has been taken.

Who knows, with a little bit more coaxing I may give up shampoo altogether … but not just yet.

Join #AYearInADay Citizen Science Project to see if we can all inspire one another to do more to restore planetary health

We’d love you to collaborate with us and share any actions you take to restore planetary health in the comments below or on our social media. While we welcome you to share ANY ACTION you take to inspire others, we’ll be recording NEW or EXTRA actions that people take as part of our tally, because we’re trying to inspire one another to do more than we’re already doing. Feel free to copy some of the actions our participants have been sharing – the action only needs to be NEW for you. Let us know if other people are influenced by your posts, or ours, so that we can measure outcomes of this project. To leave a comment on this blog you’ll need to enter your name and email address.

Our first step is to record 365 new actions. Our second step will be to aim for 365 new actions in one single day. Imagine if we could do it every day of the year! You can subscribe to receive a daily action from us here