What if we told you that your hair care could help save the planet?
Sounds dramatic, we know, but it's entirely true! With The High-End Hippie, your shampoo and conditioner reduce plastic waste, aid water conservation efforts, support biodiversity, offset carbon emissions, and even plant trees!
Have you ever thought about all of the products in your bathroom and realized how much plastic is just sitting there, accumulating? Yeah, us too. Let's be real - we like our skincare, and our hair care, and anything else we group into that oh-so-important self-care routine. It's hard to imagine compromising for lesser quality on those things, even for something as important as the environment.
So what if you didn't have to compromise?
THE BOLD, BEAUTIFUL, BREAKTHROUGH BRAND
The High-End Hippie is a Canadian, female-owned (#girlboss) company that's revolutionizing the way we approach hair care: their mission is to provide salon-quality hair products that allow their clients to pursue an environmentally conscious lifestyle without ever sacrificing on beauty or luxury. Enter their shampoo and conditioner bars: compact, high-concentrate bars that are rejuvenating, long-lasting, and most importantly, plastic-free.
Founder Amy Hamilton is an Okanagan-based (hey girl, us too!) entrepreneur with years of extensive experience in the luxury hotel, spa, and salon industry. With a desire to see luxurious, high-end products in the shampoo + conditioner bar market, Amy set to work creating salon-quality formulas while keeping a unique environmental focus on the formulation, packaging, and manufacturing process.
Her passion for quality, lofty standards, love for the environment, and obsession with creating chemically sound formulas have given life to The High-End Hippie, invigorating and disrupting an industry that's lacking in shouldering environmental responsibility (another reason we love them!). Welcome to the age of low-waste professional hair care.
PRODUCT FEATURE - THE BIG 5
The company's main product line is comprised of their four shampoo + conditioner types and, their newest addition, a 3-in-1 bar! You'll find the right fit for any hair type, with options for special conditions like sensitive scalp as well.
- Awaken - Perfect for fine, thin hair. Promotes circulation to the scalp for fuller, thicker hair.
- Clarify - Specifically formulated for blondes, greys, and normal/oily hair. Detoxifies and tones for vibrancy and softness.
- Restore - Fabulous for curly, normal, and/or damaged hair. Re-mineralizes and conditions.
- Soothe - A calming solution for inflammatory/sensitive scalp conditions and for normal/dry hair. Relieves and calms sensitive scalps and gently hydrates.
- Active Bar - All-in-one shampoo, body wash, and shave bar. A great option for the guy (or gal!) that wants a simple but still effective daily routine.
LITTLE BUT LONG-LASTING
These little bars are small, but mighty! Each bar fits comfortably in the palm of your hand, but really packs a punch when it comes to delivering volume.
The full-sized shampoo bars (that's the 90g size) and the full sized conditioner bars (55g size) will last about 70 washes. The travel sizes (39g shampoo and 25g conditioner) will last roughly 35 washes. For reference, those full sized bars are approximately the equivalent of two standard bottles of shampoo and conditioner (roughly 250ml size) - pretty sweet.
Naturally, this is dependent on your hair type and how much you're using each wash. Each purchase comes with a handy and simple how-to guide that'll guide you through the washing process.
THE ENVIRONMENTAL EDGE
Five distinct pillars characterize The High-End Hippie's efforts to minimize the hair care industry's traditionally negative effects on the environment:
- Water conservation: the manufacturing process requires significantly less water than a traditional shampoo, ensuring that freshwater resources are continually protected. Many of their customers also find that they need to wash their hair less frequently - same clean hair, less shower time, less water!
- Deforestation: The High-End Hippie is combatting deforestation with every purchase through a unique partnership with TreeEra! For every 2 bars purchased, 1 tree is planted. In addition to their tree-planting commitments, they're also dedicated to using paper products that are Forest Stewardship Council Certified or post consumer waste.
- Plastic pollution: each bar replaces upwards of 2 250mL plastic bottles of shampoo.
- Soil degradation: only ingredients that are organically farmed, readily biodegradable, or COSMOS-standard/ECOCERT are used in the making of their products. This ensures continually biodiverse soil and avoids future degradation.
- Climate change: The High-End Hippie works with the only Green-e Certified Printer in Canada to produce their packaging to help offset carbon emissions. Their bars are also lighter and smaller in size than a traditional shampoo bottle, resulting in far fewer emissions when shipping.
FABULOUS FORMULATIONS
The all-natural approach to cleansing and treating your hair! High-End Hippie bars are created using botanical infusions, essential oils, and safe, non-toxic stabilizing ingredients. Ingredients are also vegan, certified cruelty-free, and naturally derived. These include milky oats, lavender, ylang ylang, rose, marshmallow root, geranium, sage, vetiver, and more.
Rich in essential oil infusions, each bar has a natural aromatherapy effect - not only are these infusions incredibly beneficial to the health of your scalp and hair, but provide a soothing, calming effect. Steamy mini-spa in your own shower? Sign us up.
Organic botanical infusions also lend a hand to the genius of these formulas. By using locally-sourced, hand-prepared botanicals, your hair and scalp benefits from a wider range of nutrients and phytochemicals from the plant material. This raw nutrition carries a host of benefits directly to your hair: strengthens the hair shaft, stimulates circulation to promote hair growth, reduces free radical damage, brightens colour-treated hair, and soothes the scalp to avoid any inflammation.
You'll also find that these bars create a luscious lather, making it easy to spread for those with longer or thicker hair. Starting at the top of your head, simply massage the bar into your scalp to suds up, and spread down your hair towards the ends once you've got a good lather going.
To wrap up the manufacturing process, all High-End Hippie bars are created in small batches, ensuring fresh ingredients and a shorter time between creation and use. No old stock here!
PURPOSEFUL PACKAGING
You might be wondering how The High-End Hippie deals with packaging, especially since they're so focused on a low-waste approach. Unsurprisingly, the small amount of packaging that is used to ship and keep products safe/sanitary is just about as environmentally ethical as it gets!
The company uses small boxes that have been custom-created and printed by the only Green Certified printer in Canada. Additionally, all of the stickers used for sealing or product identification purposes are completely compostable and use a soy-based ink!
Achieving carbon-neutrality is also on the radar for this innovative company - they've partnered with Off-Setters to invest in renewable energy and clean technology projects. This includes, notably (and locally!) the Great Bear Rainforest Carbon Project in Haida Gwaii, British Columbia.
They top off their sustainable shipping and packing process by using entirely recyclable materials and not including packing slips with orders. Go electronic!
THE POWER OF PROFESSIONAL
Salon-grade products that fit in the palm of your hand? Now that's powerful.
Just because these products differ from the type of chemical makeup you see in a typical salon shampoo doesn't mean they're any less effective; in fact, it's quite the opposite. Here's how High-End Hippie measures up against other salon-quality hair care:
- Anti-frizz. Anti-frizz technology plays a part in the smoothing effects of the conditioner bars; a variety of natural emollients work to seal the cuticle, locking in essential moisture and preventing the movement of moisture in and out of the underlying cortex. This leaves the hair protected, soft, and manageable.
- pH balanced. By reducing the changes in pH that your hair can experience (by washing with a formula that's too acidic or alkaline), you avoid the resulting damage and split ends that can occur.
- Colour-safe. All bars are formulated to be safe for colour-treated hair; they've excluded harsh surfactants that can cause accidental colour removal like other bars.
- Chemistry. The High-End Hippie uses a blend of ingredients with varying molecular sizes, all meant to protect the hair. Ingredients with a smaller molecular structure are able to penetrate the hair shaft, providing protection from the inside. Ingredients comprised of larger molecules lock in moisture around the hair, creating a barrier to prevent moisture loss (also known as an occlusive function).
THE "ACCIDENTAL ENVIRONMENTALIST"
At some point, we've all considered how we can better protect the environment with our beauty choices. Looking through mission statements and promises by various companies, wondering why our favourite brands aren't doing the same, and eventually just going back to what we know. Even today, it's difficult to balance the climate responsibility we want to see in a company with the results that our products provide for us.
With The High-End Hippie, their goal isn't to steer you in their direction by being environmentally conscious - it's to provide the best possible product so that you're getting the results you want in the way your hair looks and feels. The best part of all this is that you won't have to wonder or worry about how your haircare choices are affecting the environment - they've taken care of all of that!
Become an "accidental environmentalist" by choosing what's best for you and your hair, and leaving the environmental change to the pros behind this incredible company!
TL;DR
If you're looking for luxury, professional-grade haircare, with options for your unique haircare needs, BUT you also want to take steps to minimize your impact on the environment, look no further: The High-End Hippie checks all the boxes!
Clean, Canadian, low-waste, and salon-quality: you'll never have to compromise again!
