The Top Line:

BUY. We think Terra Beauty Facial Bars are a great option for a clay-based facial cleanser that is also zero waste. No more plastic tubes for your general face wash. We have been using it every day for about a year, and we still have well over half the face bar left! Combined with lavender that both smells nice and is antibacterial - we think that’s a win.

Update July 2021: We changed our review to be even more enthusiastic: we love using this bar and it’s such a good value for money!
We have been washing with this bar for once a day, every day, since we purchased it last year. The bar is maybe down by 40%, which means we reassessed it’s price point: given how much is left after a year, this is not a splurge, it’s great value for great ingredients! And we still love washing our face with it!

Note: Terra makes other facial cleansing bars available on Grove (which we have not yet reviewed), including this activated charcoal with yellow clay.

The Breakdown:

• Cost & Products: $13.00 for one bar on Grove Collaborative

• How ‘Clean’ Is This? Really clean! No weird ingredients and no palm oil. Shea butter, avocado oil, coconut oil, caster seed oil, rosehip, and kaolin clay…that’s pretty much it.

• Packaging: Standard paper packaging

• Purchasing & Shipping: We have ordered from Grove Collaborative three time. The desktop site is growing on us and is better than mobile, but still not intuitive to navigate.

• Good to know: Refills and subscription is the name of the game at Grove Collaborative. They try to reduce packaging but sometimes unsuccessfully.

  Grove Collaborative is a B-corporation. Normal corporations have a goal to make more money for their owners. B-corps do that too, but they also set specific, social and ethical goals such as governance, environment, and workers. Read about Grove Collaborative’s goals here.

• Coupons: None that we know if - but you get a hefty amount of gifts the first time you order.

• What’s Your Impact? No more plastic face wash bottles - just this beauty bar.

The Experience

Context: We change up our face washes — from fancy face washes to really simple Cetaphil washes. We were drawn to the fact that this was not just a bar, but it also had clay as a main ingredient.

• Lathers nicely & looks pretty in our bathroom

• Smells lovely - the lavender scent is subtle

• We were surprised to find that our skin feels slightly exfoliated, despite the fact that there are no signs of any granules

• Feels a smidge squeaky clean - which we wipe up with some toner afterwards

• Given how little we’ve used in two weeks - cleansing day and night - we think this bar is going to last us a very long time.

The Cost

The Terra Beauty Bar is definitely a fancy bar of facial cleanser, containing ingredients such as shea butter, coconut and avocado oil as well as rose kaolin clay, but it does not contain ingredients like glycolic, alpha hydroxy, hyaluronic acid. We will compare it to cleansers like CeraVe (bar), Cetaphil, SkinFix Barrier + Foaming (kaolin lay), and bareMinerals Clay Chamelian.

Money Report: C̶o̶m̶p̶a̶r̶e̶d̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶o̶t̶h̶e̶r̶ ̶b̶a̶r̶ ̶o̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶m̶a̶r̶k̶e̶t̶,̶ ̶T̶e̶r̶r̶a̶ ̶B̶e̶a̶u̶t̶y̶ ̶B̶a̶r̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶d̶e̶f̶i̶n̶i̶t̶e̶l̶y̶ ̶a̶ ̶l̶i̶t̶t̶l̶e̶ ̶s̶p̶l̶u̶r̶g̶e̶.̶ After reassessing for almost a year, we think Terra’s face wash bar is a great value! We are still using our beauty bar, and have been using it daily, for about a year. If you are looking for kaolin clay cleaners, then comparing to the liquid options on the market, the bar is a bargain, especially since we know you get way more washes out of bar-based products versus liquid-based products.

The Good:

✔ Zero waste face wash

✔ Ingredients that are natural

✔ Smells lovely, light lavender - which is an antibacterial that can prevent acne as well as reduce inflammation

✔ Looks pretty in our bathroom

The Bad:

✗ It’s a splurge when comparing to drugstore brands, but if you’re looking for clay-based cleanser, then the competition is much more expensive.

Our Recommendation:
BUY. We think Terra Beauty Facial Bars are a great option for a clay-based facial cleanser that is also zero waste. No more plastic tubes for your general face wash. We have been using it every day for about a year, and we still have well over half the face bar left! Combined with lavender that both smells nice and is antibacterial - we think that’s a win.

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!