Unwrapped Life Fixer Conditioner Review 2020 | Solid, Zero-Waste Conditioner
The Top Line:
We love the idea of scrapping packaging altogether and Unwrapped Life’s Conditioner in Fixer is exactly that. Just a bar of conditioner that you apply from ends to roots as you would with liquid conditioner. ZERO waste. More uses per purchase. The results when air drying were o-k, but when drying with a blow dryer (note: not fancy blow drying), the results were almost exactly the same —- even giving us a little more extra body, which we appreciated.
At around the same annual cost as typical drugstore brands, it’s a BUY from us.
Check out our Big Zero Waste Shampoo and Conditioner Bar Review on The Reduce Report.
The Breakdown:
Cost & Products: $14.00 for a one unwrapped conditioner bar
How ‘Clean’ Is This? As Zero-waste and clean as it gets: arrives with no packaging itself. Ingredients are vegan, eco-friendly and cruelty-free.
Packaging: Arrived in 100% recycled cardboard packaging.
Purchasing & Shipping: Easy. We bought ours via Package-Free shop, but the brand sells its own wares on the website, Unwrapped Life, but at a higher shipping threshold ($75)
Good to Know: We used ours as you would a normal conditioner, from ends to roots.
Coupons: At the time of writing, MAKINCHANGES gets you 10% off.
What’s Your Impact? Pretty dramatic reduction in plastic. One bar replaces two to three 16oz bottles of conditioner.
The Efficacy
For context, we wash and condition every other day (or longer, if we can get away with it). Conditioners currently on the bathroom shelf are natural and attempt to be ‘cone'-free. Medium length hair that is straight-ish and conditioned with every wash; currently went back to liquid shampoo to isolate the effects of bar conditioners.
We went end to root and it feels similar to typical conditioners: silky (we were pleasantly surprised by this)
After letting it sit for about 5 minutes (we do this with our normal conditioner), rinsed out and dried
Air dry: Results were a smidge poofier than normal, so we’re not excited about that but …
Blow dry: Fabulous, almost imperceptible between our old bottle conditioners and this one. Loved it.
The Cost
We assume you use between 2 to 3 16oz conditioner bottles per year and that each ounce of bar conditioner was created equal. YMMV.
Unwrapped Life Conditioner Bar $14 | Yearly cost: $14
Zero Waste Store Conditioner Bar $12 | Yearly cost: $12
Lush Conditioner Bars $14 | Yearly cost: $14
Olaplex Bond Maintenance Conditioner $28 | Yearly Cost: $112 to $168
Pantene Pro-V Conditioner $7 | Yearly Cost $9 to $14
L’Oreal Paris Elvive $4 | Yearly Cost $10 to $15
Money Thoughts: Unwrapped Life is in line with all solid conditioners. Even better - it is also about the same cost when compared to drugstore conditioners in plastic bottles.
The Good:
✔ Super cost effective - cheaper than most drugstore conditioners
✔ No ‘cone ingredients
✔ Smells pretty nice (we got the Fixer)
✔ Natural ingredients
✔ Easy enough to apply
✔ Results were the same when drying with a blow dryer
✔ We got a little extra body in our hair!
The Bad:
✗ Doesn’t leave hair as smooth and silky as some drugstore brands when air drying
Our Recommendation:
We love the idea of conditioner bars. When you take into account how many bottles one bar replaces, the price is easy on our budget and there is literally no plastic waste when purchasing these bars. We really liked the Fixer from Unwrapped life. BUY.
We're on a mission to reduce our personal carbon footprint with small, hopefully easy, changes in our home to fight against climate change. This means we're looking for products that may be all natural, ideally zero waste, reusable or compostable -- while still being affordable!
