You are right! No plastic is best! ALL plastic is horrible for the environment in the manufacturing stage! I handle the product situation as best I can this way:

1. I discourage the purchase of new packaging by offering bulk, reused and fill your own container options. I even overprice new containers and discount heavily for refilling. I show the cost of packaging on the receipt.

2. I choose the least offensive new packaging possible. This means that bakelite is the least offensive cap I can get for my glass jars and bottles. Although it’s plastic with all its incumbent chemical nastiness, it’s also made with wood fibre and other more natural wastes and is more like ceramic in its end of life impact. In any case, my other options are horrible soft metal and plastic composites that are more fragile and more absorbent.

3. I love the storage jars you recommend, but they won’t replace bottles and the bottles I have with that sort of lid are impossible to sanitize for commercial reuse. Plus essential oils eat the rubber gaskets. This is not natural real rubber anyhow – it’s a petroleum latex thingy I’m told! In anycase, I have jars like this inmy kitchen – some 30-100 years old! I bought a large cork for my 100 year old milk bottle. I adore old containers!

I tried for 2 years to sell shampoo and conditioner in glass bottles, but people kept buying plastic crap to fill at the clinic. so I sourced aluminum… against, the best imperfect option I could find.

So given that every container we’ve talked about is highly manufactured, we need to respect everything we’ve got on the planet already and cultivate a culture of repairing and refilling.

Any new packaging ideas, please email me at anarreshealth@gmail.com . I need all the help I can get!

Love & RRRevolution, Tracey
Tracey´s last blog ..Join the Anarres Natural Health Community, on Kiva

my favorite storing jars are these: http://www.kookwinkel.nl/upload/Producten/Spulletjes/Sappen%20en%20wecken/tn/IMG_8989%20Weckpot%20met%20beugelsluiting.jpg

however, i have no idea whether those are even available in the states. you can get them from really tiny (perfect for hair products such as these) to really large (a gallon or so)
theyre just made with glass, metal and natural rubber lids. no plastic involved, no silicon involved, and they can store airtight.

the only downside if youve had them for about 20 years, the rubber lid gets old and actually crumbled into tons of little pieces. but over here they also sell the rubber rings separately.

Seems to work.

Not great, but functional.

As to your leftover conditioner with extra ingredients…perhaps mail it back to the company with an explanation of why you are no longer going to be using their product.

Best wishes!

I have already been inspired to try the Lush shampoo bar, and I have to say, 2 weeks in, I’m thrilled with it!! Normally I try all sort of different shampoos and end up with a scritchy head, but my scalp is feeling much better already.

My husband has been complaining about not being able to find the right styling product for his hair, so I shall point him in this direction.

Not too sure I’m ready to try the baking soda thing yet though, hubby thinks I’m mad for replacing the daily shower spray with a vinegar solution, so it’s one small step at a time!

Bakelite is relatively natural and harmless, made from resin and wood flours:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakelite

Of course, there's always a lid liner of thing styrofoamy stuff that might someday be replaced with a waste fruit leather type film?

Love & RRRevolution, Tracey

Your lid may be bakelite, the oldest, safest form of plastic in my opinion. The lids are made specifically for the jars, so there’s not much in the way of interchanging unless the manufacturer develops options. I have some metal lids, but they deform and often need replacing, don’t hold oils or fluids in, and have plastic components anyhow. Bakelite so far as I know is rock-like and pretty inert in landfill. I don’t think wild life are attracted to it at all. It’s safer than ashphalt when disposed of. It can shatter, but my attrition rate is only 3 or so a year, and I deal with thousands of containers.

If anyone has new info about bakelite, I’d love to hear it.

The ingredients look great, but your correspondent is mistaken in speaking of aloe vera oil – it’s water soluble and comes in gel or juice form only. I wonder what emulsifies the mixture? I’m getting into the lab thing any second now! As for fragrance, that it almost always a euphemism for synthetics and solvent extracted horrors. I wouldn’t even trust the term “natural fragrance”. Uranium is natural – so are the glands of animals and the stress urine of whales, and these are natural fragrances! What’s the harm in just stating that it’s tangerine? Anyone with the sense to copy their recipe would know that:
a) it’s tangerine because it doesn’t smell like orange or mandarin essential oil
b) it’s not a good fragrance to use because it photosensitizes the skin and hair, leading to a risk of burning the kin and lightening and damaging the hair. Unless they have deterpinated it, in which case it’s no longer natural and is irritating on a deeper level. I would use a lavender bulgarian or a cedarwood essential oil. Natural only means not adulterated with chemicals or other oils.

It’s fabulous that they’ve made a natural hair product that demystifies things to a large extent and that comes in a glass jar! I wish that we who make things could get stores and customers to make the leap into refilling things locally. That would make my life feel complete!