How to take a plastic free and  low waste shower 

So everyone needs to shower but if you are a girl you need both shampoo, conditioner, and body wash. Most shampoos, conditioners, and body washes sold in normal grocery stores are packaged in plastic. Yes, there are a couple of natural alternatives out there but all of the brands still package there natural, eco-friendly body wash in plastic. 

In your local bulk store though you can find nice alternatives to the products you are normally using when you shower. 

I have found both shampoos, conditioner and body wash in hard bar form in my local bulk store. 

I buy shampoo, conditioner and shower gel bars without any plastic packaging in my local bulk store. I can also fill my glass jars whenever i want to use liquid forms of shampoo, conditioner and soap. 

These following products I have bought in different bulk stores. 

The shampoo bar is bought from a bulk store in Cardiff in Wales called ripple living. It´s from a company called Cole & Co and it comes packaged in just some paper which can be recycled. 

I also use travelling shampoo from the same company as my other shampoo bar 

The shower gel bar down below is brought from a bulk store called "the food cooperative" in Helsingborg where I live.  It comes in some paper wrapping that can be recycled. I store it in a metal box from lush just to keep it from getting on to other stuff. 

The second soap bar is bought at my normal local grocery store

These other soap  and conditioner bars have come from a couple of places. 

Pic nr 1 is a normal soap bar from dove bought from my normal grocery store and it came in just some paper that could be recycled.

Pic nr 2 is a conditioner bar bought like that from lush. The conditioner bar I bought from lush but as I read that lush is doing greenwashing which is a form of spin in which green PR or green marketing is deceptively used to promote the perception that an organization's products, aims or policies are environmentally friendly when they´re not.

So I am using it up at the moment but in the future, I won't be buying my conditioner bars from them but from my local bulk store as well. 

Pic nr 3 and 6 is two organic soap bars i got from some hotel that i have saved.

Pic nr 4 is a organic bar of soap from the faith of nature that i just bought like that without packaging. 

pic nr 5 is a soap bar that i got from some hotel as well.

you can also fill your own glass jars at your local bulk store with shampoo, conditioner and soap.

That´s the good thing I find with bulk stores, you can fill several jars of something and then you can store it at home in your pantry or your linen closet or cleaning closet or wherever you keep a backstock of everything you need to refill from time to time. In that way, you always have extra at home if you run out of something. 

The other good thing about the bulk store is that you don't need to buy a new round of shampoo and conditioner packaged in plastic every time you are out grocery shopping and that saves on the environment because you don't get any plastic or cardboard trash home that you have to try and recycle every time you buy shampoo and conditioner. 

 So, in the end, it saves you both time at the grocery store, money (yes you actually do pay for the product's packaging) and the planet.

Because I am still a sucker for normal liquid body wash and shampoo and conditioner I tend to sometimes use both bars and normally plastic packaged products when I shower. The thing that I like about these products is that they are all naturally made. 

The good thing about Urtekram is that their body care products are today packed using material made of glass, metal or plastic. Today their plastic packaging material is made from mineral oil. But that is going to change during 2019, Urtekram will change to plant-based packaging made from sugar cane. More than 85% of our assortment will be in plant-based bottles and tubes. The new plant-based bottles and tubes are made of polyethylene (PE) and are of the same good and durable quality as the existing ones.

The advantage of using sugar cane is that it is a renewable resource, which absorbs CO2 from the air. After harvesting, the juice is pressed from the sugar cane. The bagasse, the solid part that remains, which cannot be used to make sugar can be used to produce alcohol. This alcohol is the starting point in the manufacture of plant-based packaging. This way we can at the same time, use a renewable source and recover the bagasse. Every ton of sugar cane actually absorbs two tons of CO2 from the environment.

The problem is that farming sugarcane can still put huge stress on the environment, your relying on large plantations that use pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers as well as significant amounts of water to grow sugar cane. The term "bioplastic" or "plant-based" can also be kind of misleading. 

Even if a plastic is classified as "biodegradable", that just means it can be broken down by bacteria or fungi, but this can still take decades and leave toxic residue behind. And if it's classified as "compostable", meaning it can be broken down relatively rapidly into compost, it might still need high-temperature industrial processing to do so.

Biopolyethylene (also known as renewable polyethylene) is polyethylene made out of ethanol, which becomes ethylene after a dehydration process.It can be made from various feedstocks including sugar cane, sugar beet, and wheat grain.

Is compostable plastic really compostable? The answer is no. PLA and other compostable (and biodegradable) plastic-like materials are still in fact plastic. If these materials are not correctly disposed of at their end of life, they will cause just as much damage to our land and marine environments as traditional petrochemical-based plastic litter.

So back to what I was saying in the beginning. I try to use my shampoo, conditioner and shower gel bars that are only packaged in the paper that can be recycled. If I have to use normal shampoo, conditioner or shower gel I use naturally made products but the thing that I don´t like is that they are packaged in plastic, plant-based or not the bottles can´t be biodegraded. 

Those are my alternatives when it comes to low waste showers.