Before we plunge into the appalling facts and figures, let’s acknowledge the presence of those gorgeous innocent-looking shampoo bottles sitting in your bathroom. The apparently harmless shampoo bottles promise the striking look of luscious hair. The hypnotizing ads and lush packaging of shampoo tempt you into spending money. You believe in the power of shampoo transforming your hair, we all do. But those gorgeous bottles do come at a cost, and it’s really starting to impact our planet.
The shampoo itself
might be
effective enough to give you with gorgeous locks but what happens to the shampoo bottle?
As soon as you finish your beloved bottle, it is replaced by another and then another. I grew up in salon culture, but I had no idea just how staggering the numbers really were. According to a study summarized by the New York Times, 8.3 billion metric tons of plastic have been produced since it was introduced in the 1950s, with around half of it made since 2004. Sadly, most of that plastic is no longer in use. Only around 9% of it has been recycled, 12% was incinerated, and 79% is accumulated in landfills or the natural environment. Plastic packaging, which is typically used for less than a year, accounted for about 42% of non-fiber (aka, non-material) plastic production in 2015. If current production and waste management trends continue, roughly 12 billion metric tons of plastic waste will be in landfills or in the natural environment by 2050.
The plastic in landfills take minimum 70 years and maximum 450 years to decompose.
In 2019, Americans produced a revenue of 29.338 billion dollars on haircare products. The rampant use of so-called all-natural and revitalizing shampoos is expected to provide revenue of 37.92 billion dollars in 2027. The figures are huge and equally devastating.
· more than 552 million shampoo bottles could be ending up in landfills every year
· the number of shampoo bottles thrown out in the United States every year could fill 1,164 football fields
· only 1 in 5 people consistently recycle items from the bathroom.
Sad but true!
Your shampoo and conditioner bottle is much more than merely a container of hair care product. With every passing day, the danger and insecurity of mother Earth increases because of the active contribution of shampoo and conditioner bottles in plastic pollution.
Even more frightening is the dilemma of being unsure about your priorities. Several surveys have been conducted worldwide to highlight the issue of the impact of shampoo and conditioner bottles on the environment. Millions of people acknowledge the disadvantage of plastic containers of shampoos and other hair products but they don’t intend to quit plastic. According to them, there are no alternatives.
Solution under spotlight: Zero-waste hair care is the solution!
Shampoo bottles have done enough damage to mother Earth. It is late but not too late to switch to alternate options. Zero-waste hair care is a reality which is beneficial for Earth as well as us.
Shampoo and conditioner bars do not create any waste. That is why we call bars a zero-waste strategy! They do not come in fancy plastic bottles but are if not more effective then your salon shampoos. Shampoo and conditioner bars give you voluminous, dandruff-free, frizz-free, smooth and silky hair.
Make the eco-friendly decision now!
But as new inventions lead to more and more shampoos relying on ingredients created in labs, we’re getting further and further away from what’s healthy and natural. In fact, the hair industry – both commercially and individually – has created a considerable carbon footprint over time.
We know that nourishing your scalp is so important. There are easy ways to take care of your scalp like using a scalp brush to stimulate blood flow and remove product build-up. (Here are a few tips on how to exfoliate your scalp!) While caring for your scalp is an important part of any hair care routine, are we unknowingly washing our scalps with products that do more harm than good?
Well, if you read the ingredients on the back of a shampoo bottle, you might be surprised. Many shampoos are filled with harmful chemicals you’ve never heard of and aren’t able to pronounce. These chemicals may not only be harmful to you, but they can also harm the environment. Plus, they strip your hair of natural oils, forcing you to purchase a separate, often equally harmful condition to replenish the oils you’ve lost.
In addition to harmful-for-everyone chemicals, many shampoos are sold in plastic bottles that are often only partially or totally unrecyclable. These bottles have already caused a tremendous amount of waste and done extensive damage to our planet. They’re dumped in our landfills and oceans, harming our atmosphere and our wildlife while they take thousands of years to decompose.
Unfortunately, shampoos have done lasting damage to our water supply in two major ways: their ingredients and the plastic containers that hold them.
One of the major environmental impacts of shampoo comes from the simple act of rinsing your hair. As the shampoo leaves your hair, the chemicals are sent down your drain and out into the water supply. These chemicals have been found in a variety of environments, including wastewater, surface water, sediment, groundwater, and drinking water.
Luckily, our drinking water is treated so you’re not ingesting those chemicals (another process that can be harmful to the environment), but our lakes, rivers, and oceans are not. These chemicals can harm both aquatic life and the animals that drink from these bodies of water. Research has shown that the chemicals in personal care products can change the hormone levels in aquatic organisms, which can cause a variety of health problems, including damaging their ability to reproduce.
Then there are the plastic bottles used to hold your shampoo. Many of them are either only partially recyclable or cannot be recycled, so they end up in our oceans and landfills. About nine million tons of plastic are thrown into the ocean annually, which is about one garbage truck of plastic every minute. These plastics can survive in water for thousands of years if they’re not consumed by marine life. When they are ingested, the chemicals in the plastic can injure or poison the animals. Those that don’t make their way into the bodies of these animals become floating waste, serving as transportation vehicles for invasive species, which can upset and damage very delicate habitats.
Dumping plastic in a landfill is equally dangerous. As they’re buried deeper into the pile and begin to decompose slowly, they can leach dangerous chemicals that eventually make their way into our groundwater and our air.