Ethique Beauty Gentle Solid Shampoo Bar Fragrance-Free

Most Helpful Critical Review

Goodbye Ethique (and Bansk Group)

I've been a customer of Ethique for five whole years, using the Bar Minimum shampoo and Too Delicious conditioner since 2020. They were the only hair care bars I could find at the time that were at all better than a regular bar of soap. This June, they switched the shape of the conditioner bars from... squares to circles, and I sent an e-mail complaining that round bars: 1) are harder to hold, 2) don't fit efficiently in a dish, and 3) don't wear evenly. And now I see they've made things even worse: the shampoos have become crescents, and the conditioners have become rounded triangular nubs. You know how the bars eventually wear down to these slippery, impossible-to-hold shapes? Now they start off that way! Has whoever designed these ever taken a shower before? I'm skeptical about the new formula, but it's the new shapes that are the last straw. I won't even try them. I'm going to start trying the other brands that have popped up since 2020, even though I've accrued enough points with Ethique to be on their highest rewards tier with free shipping on every order. I'm tired of dropping the soap. Read Ethique's blog post about the new shapes, where they admit up front that it's all really in order to have taller boxes that create a more imposing in-store shelf presence. You know what would achieve that in a simpler, more honest way, AND be better for the environment? Larger bars - an idea I've actually e-mailed them about in the past. I buy my soap in bulk as large raw blocks that I cut down to size, and I wish I could do the same with my shampoo. So if we're being honest, Ethique's always been a little bit greenwashy (a particularly apt term for a shampoo company), but it's only going to get worse; the founder, Brianne West, stepped down as CEO in 2023, and I'm sure the new CEO will listen more attentively to the whispers of the New York investment firm to which Brianne sold 75% of Ethique's stock (Bansk Group). The only green these people really care about is what they can take out of your wallet.