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Habitat Botanicals Daily Essentials Kit in Grapefruit Sandalwood Review | Zero Waste, Cruelty Free Personal Care Items

Charley Pav

The Top Line:

BUY: While Habitat Botanicals has the Buy One, Get One Free Daily Essentials kit, we recommend a BUY on the set! This way, you would get to try out all of the individual products and get a flavor for what you like! If you want to go down the individual route, we would recommend the zero waste shampoo, conditioner, and vegan deodorant. While the body wash was nice to use, it’s a bit pricy (not as pricey as liquid body wash though), as is the lip balm.

Check out Deodorant Roundup and Hair Care Roundup on the Reduce Report.

The Breakdown:

  • Cost & Products: Buy One Get One Essentials Kit for $59 but you can buy each of the items here:

  • How ‘Clean’ Is This?

    • Shampoo/Body Wash Bars : good — has an ingredient where if it’s not rinsed out, can be an allergen (cocamidopropyl betaine)

    • Conditioner Bar: also ok, but has an ingredient that is questionable, though the EU has permitted its use. The EU has way stricter rules on chemicals in products. (Behentrimonium methosulfate)

    • Deodorant // Lip bam: Super clean!

  • Packaging: Cardboard and paper — zero plastic packaging!

  • Purchasing & Shipping: Pretty straightforward on the website; free shipping on orders over $30, otherwise it is $5.

  • What’s Your Impact? In addition to removing the plastic bottles from landfill, each of the products from Habitat Essentials tend to have fewer ingredients and be more natural.

The Good:

✔ Generally clean ingredients, barring some allergens in the shampoo bar

✔ Zero waste, paper and cardboard packaging - very efficient packaging!

✔ Nice scents overall, not overwhelming - the deodorant is the most scented

✔ Body Wash Bar in the Daily Essentials kit BOGO comes in tea tree

✔ Loved the shampoo and conditioner feel - no acidic rinse necessary

✔ Cruelty-free/vegan

✔ Products are made within 3 days of shipping!

✔ Price of the Buy One, Get One Free kit is a great deal! Individually, most products are in line (except body wash)

The Bad:

✗ Body wash bar is a little slippery feeling because it’s body wash, not really soap (which is a pro to us)

✗ Body wash bar also seems to disappear rather quickly… and is the most pricey

The Experience

We replaced our daily personal care products, including shampoo, conditioner, deodorant, lip balm, and body wash bar all with the Habitat Daily Essentials Kit. We will try to break it out by product, but even before we begin, we will say that we did like each of the products individually:

  • Shampoo

    • Suds up quite nicely

    • Limited scent associated with it (Aloe doesn’t really have a strong scent…)

    • The shampoo bar is just that - shampoo, and not drying like other soaps. Note: no acidic rinse needed!

    • Would need to use it a mesh bag: shampoo bars that don’t need acidic rinse tend to fall apart and soften over time, so we will be using the Kitsch bag

  • Conditioner

    • Like the shampoo, there is no real scent associated with it

    • Tip: when we first started to use it, it didn’t feel like the bar was actually going on our tresses. So we used more and more and more until we gave up.

    • …Don’t do what we did - especially if you let conditioner sit for a few minutes before rinsing out. The conditioner softens a lot in your hair while you cleanse, etc. When rinsing out a few minutes later, we were pleasantly surprised at the softness of our hair. It may even feel softer than the byHumankind Conditioner Bar that we loved.

  • Body Wash Bar

    • First product so far in the lineup that had any scent: tea tree

    • You can pick your scent when buying individually, but we did not get a chance when getting the Daily Essentials Kit

    • Much softer than traditional soap bars

    • Pro: softer on skin, like a body wash as opposed to a hard soap; Con: feels a little slimy when using it… we don’t mind since it’s not drying… just a heads up.

  • Deodorant

  • Lip Balm

    • A little grainy and thick to apply - we didn’t mind, and can it protect lips? Yes, but if you have actual chapped lips, can see this as potentially aggravating

    • No SPF

    • Soft, moisturizing enough, but probably doesn’t compete with the smoothness of a Chapstick

    • Gentle, lovely scent of cocoa butter and very light vanilla

The Cost

Shampoo & Conditioner: We assume you use between 2 to 3 shampoo or conditioner bottles OR 4 ounces of a solid shampoo or conditioner bar per year. We also assume that each ounce of bars was created equal for our analysis. We compared plastic-free shampoo and conditioner bars from Habitat Botanicals to byHumankind, HiBar, Chagrin Valley, Public Goods, DuJardin and both Lush Soak and Float Shampoo and Daddy-O Conditioner in addition to traditional drugstore brands like TRESemme and Pantene. Pureology and Olaplex are liquid, SLS-free (and very expensive) options.

Body Wash: We compared Habitat Botanicals’ Body Wash Bar to typical drugstore brands as well as Grove Collaborative, Plus, Cleancult, Pre de Provence, and Dr. Squach Soap bars. On average, a family of four will use 30oz of bar soap (as opposed to over 40 bottles of body wash!)

Deodorant: The range of deodorant/antiperspirant a person uses is between two and twelve sticks per year. In addition to our zero-waste and refillable options like Papr, Native, and Hammond Herbs, we also compared plastic free Habitat Botanicals deodorant to a number of other popular deodorant brands, like Dove, Old Spice, Tom’s of Maine and Schmidt’s.

Lip Balm: We compared Habitat Botanicals Lip Balm against an array of other popular lip balm brands, most of whom came in a much smaller size — Marrick’s Lip Balm, Burt’s Bees, Veleda Skin Food Lip Butter, eos Organic Lip Balm, Aquafor Lip Repair Stick, Blistex Medicated Lip Balm, Chapstick, and C.O. Bigelow Rose Salve Lip Balm.

Money Report: We are going to be honest here - we can make a really strong case to get the Buy One, Get One Daily Essentials from Habitat Botanicals. Taken altogether, the package of products is a great deal! Individually, some of the products like the shampoo sort of fall in line with the competitors pricing. Unfortunately, the body wash bar and lip balm are super pricey. Compared to other bars, it’s very pricey, though still cheaper than liquid shower washes.

Our Recommendation:

BUY: While Habitat Botanicals has the Buy One, Get One Free Daily Essentials kit, we recommend a BUY on the set! This way, you would get to try out all of the individual products and get a flavor for what you like! If you want to go down the individual route, we would recommend the zero waste shampoo, conditioner, and vegan deodorant. While the body wash was nice to use, it’s a bit pricy (not as pricey as liquid body wash though), as is the lip balm.

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!