Native's Plastic Free Deodorant in Coconut & Vanilla Review 2020 | Zero-Waste, Natural Deodorant Stick
The Top Line:
It depends! For the commitment-phobes, Hammond Herbs nets you the same cost per year without a subscription. On the other hand, if you like necessities showing up without prompting, then a subscription to the plastic free, zero-waste (love, love) Native deodorant might be for you. One minor flaw, which we pointed out earlier, is that the push up part of the deodorant does not actually stay up. So, you are actively pushing as you apply! A little annoying, but we’ll take it that over white marks any day.
As always, we will keep looking for a cheaper zero waste option that can compete with the drugstore brands. Right now, almost all natural, waste-reducing are in this higher price range.
Updated as of 28 Dec 2020 to include the use of the tube near the end of the stick. New, new update 2021: a user informed us that you can fold over the bottom (like toothpaste!) and that will push the deodorant stick up. We have not tried this yet!
Also, check out our Big Deodorant Roundup Review.
The Breakdown:
Cost & Products: $13 for one deodorant; Subscribe and save option is $11 per stick, and you can get delivery every 1, 2, 3, or 4 months. Not a bad deal, as long as you commit to at least 3 sticks per year.
How ‘Clean’ Is This? Pretty clean - no aluminum and mostly ingredients that you can understand.
Packaging: Paper! No plastic.
Purchasing & Shipping: We bought ours directly from the Native website - easy to use. Maybe we were sleepy, but we did not see the Citrus and Herbal Musk option. It sounds fabulous.
Note: Also available on Amazon
Good to know: Looks like all of the ingredients are the same as the original Native Deodorant.
Coupons: None that we know of.
What’s Your Impact? By going zero-waste, you reduce all of the weird plastic parts of deodorant that make it impossible to recycle, by 100%. We love that.
Experience & Efficacy
Context: We have been trying to ween ourselves away from potentially toxic chemicals for the last two years, and especially over the last six months of WFH. We’ve previously reviewed other natural deodorants: Hammond Herbs (zero-waste), Public Goods, Myro (refillable), and byHumankind (refillable) and we did a big deodorant roundup.
The packaging was a cleaner version of Hammond Herbs — very millennial.
The push-up portion did not stay… up. The stick always slides down, so we have to us our fingers for support every time we use the stick. Not great.
The application is a smoother version of Hammond Herbs, but not quite Myro or Public Goods level.
It’s really easy to overuse the product and then develop deodorant stains on garments - don’t do that! Two to three swipes is plenty.
Did its job in terms of blocking smell — even after a 40 minute workout session. No pilling that we noticed, either. Nice.
Could still smell the saccharine sweetness of the Coconut Vanilla while working out and throughout the day.
We like the scent, but know it can be cloying to some people — it’s a super traditional coconut vanilla, kind of like NYM dry shampoo.
[Update] Now that we’re near the end of our deodorant bar, we are using the end of our toothbrush to push the stick up the tube. Yep. It’s that long. And yes, there is still a ton of product to use.
[Update 2] Had a user let us know that you can squeeze the bottom of the Native tube so that you don’t have to keep pushing up the stick with a 3rd party toothbrush. 😊 We will try this next time.
The Cost
There seems to be no middle ground when it comes to how much deodorant a person uses per year. So, we used the best numbers we could: the average user of underarm deodorant/antiperspirant uses between two and twelve sticks per year. In addition to our zero-waste and refillable options, we also compared plastic free Native deodorant to a number of other popular deodorant brands, like Dove, Old Spice, Tom’s of Maine and Schmidt’s.
*Native subscriptions start at 3 per year; we left it as two to keep it consistent with our previous reviews.
Money Report: Even among the more expensive zero-waste or refillable options, Native is definitely up there when it comes to cost. The subscription makes it a little easier on the wallet! But do note that the minimum subscription is every 4 months or 3 deodorant sticks per year.
The Good:
✔ Scent (coconut vanilla) is fun but bold — we would love to try the Citrus and Herbal Must
✔ Natural ingredients
✔ Kept us stink-free even after a HIIT workout
✔ Deodorants are completely plastic free, zero-waste
✔ Good texture, softening and moisturizing
✔ Did not leave residue or white marks on black tops
The Bad:
✗ Still pretty pricey, even with the subscription like all of the zero-waste or refillable natural deodorants that we have come across so far
✗ Have to commit to a subscription to get the slightly better pricing
Our Recommendation:
It depends! For the commitment-phobes, Hammond Herbs nets you the same cost per year without having to go the subscription route. On the other hand, if you like necessities showing without having to think, then a subscription to the plastic free, zero waste (love, love) Native deodorant might be for you. One minor flaw, which we pointed out earlier, is that the push up part of the deodorant does not actually stay up. So, you are actively pushing as you apply! A little annoying, but we’ll take it that over white marks any day.
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!
