Blog
How to Use Hair Repair Spray
Generally,Plaine Products' Hair Repair works to smooth the hair shaft by filling in breakage and mending split ends. It helps detangle by reducing friction between hair strands-making it easier to get through stubborn tangles, also repair split ends and works as a heat protector.
Learn more
2 New Hand Wash Scents!
We have added 2 new, seasonal scents to ourhand wash line and they are helping get us in the holiday spirit!Our hydrating hand wash is now available in Cherry Almond and Sweet Orange Patchouli, in addition to our current best sellers, Citrus Lavender and Rosemary Mint Vanilla. The essential oils used in our hand wash will make your hands smell good without adding harsh chemicals to your soap.And just in time for cold and flu season! Did you know that only 19% of people wash their hands after using the toilet? We can do better than that!Keeping hands clean is one of the most important steps we can take to avoid getting sick and spreading germs. When you wash your hands with soap and water, you’re “actually annihilating the viruses, rendering them harmless” as the soap dissolves the very structure of the virus. And yes, you need to wash your hands for at least 20 seconds. Scientific studies show that you need to scrub for 20 seconds to remove harmful germs from your hands. The lather is important too. A good lather forms pockets that trap and destroy the germs, washing them away as you rinse your hands.Why Choose Plaine Products Hand Wash? Not all hand washes are created equal. Plaine Products offers an aloe-based hand wash that’s safe for you and your skin! It gently washes away germs and bacteria without the use of harsh chemical detergents to dry your skin.Unlike most mainstream hand washes our first (and main) ingredient is aloe. Not only does our hand wash effectively kill germs, it contains antioxidants and more than 75 nutrients, including minerals and essential amino acids that provide hydration to the skin. Even when you are washing your hands multiple times a day our soap won’t dry your skin as other hand soaps do. Plus, our variety of pleasing scents will leave things smelling so good every time you scrub up!
Learn more
Help for Static Prone Hair
While it's hard to know exactly what is causing your static hair, the colder weather of winter is certainly not helping. We have a few suggestions for helping to combat the static in your hair. What Causes Static Hair? When the weather gets cooler outside and we turn our heat on indoors, the dry air can dry our skin and hair and cause static. Your hair is literally building up an electric charge that makes the strands of your hair repel each other. This can leave your hair frizzy and standing on end. What can I do to prevent it? We turned to our resident hair expert, Krysia, for her suggestions on getting the static out of your hair. Here's what she had to say: A humidifier in your house can help add some moisture back into the air. Try using a cotton t-shirt instead of a towel when getting moisture out of your hair after the shower. Sometimes a towel can roughen up the hair cuticle and cause frizz and static. A wooden or metal comb is better than plastic because plastic is non-conductive and causes static electricity when you comb your hair. Skipping hot tools and opting for air drying your hair can also help. Can Plaine Products help? Try a deep conditioner treatment with Plaine Products deep conditioner. Both our Cherry Almond Shampoo and Deep conditioner contain sweet almond oil, which is especially nourishing and helps to combat frizz. It also promotes shine and can help prevent hair breakage. To use, shampoo your hair as usual and then apply a small amount of Deep Conditioner to wet hair, focusing on ends. Leave on for 5 minutes and rinse thoroughly. For extra hydration or for damaged hair, leave the deep conditioner on for 5-30 minutes with a shower cap before rinsing. This will add some extra moisture to your hair. Spritz the ends of your hair with Plaine Products Hair Repair before blow drying as a heat protectant, to detangle, seal in moisture and repair split ends. Plaine Products Hair Repair replenishes moisture in the hair and can be used in place of a conditioner on fine hair, or after conditioning as a detangler for thick or curly hair. Simply spray on damp hair focusing on the ends and air dry or blow-dry as usual. Plaine Products Beauty Oil can be used on damp or dry hair, before using hot tools or to let hair air dry. Run it through damp curls to define and tame frizz or dab a bit on dry hair to tame fly-aways and avoid static. Lighter than Argan Oil, this oil is a hydrating blend of Helianthus annuus (sunflower) seed oil, Vitis vinifera (grape) seed oil, squalene (olive derived), and Simmondsia Chinensis (jojoba) seed oil and can be applied to the ends of hair to tame flyaways, frizz, and bring the shape back to curls. Plaine Products Styling Gel is perfect if you like a slicked back look or want to tame flyaways. It's a lightweight gel that will tame your static without weighing your hair down or making it look greasy. For even more winter hair care tips, be sure to check out this blog post:Winter Hair Care Tips for Healthier Hair this Winter
Learn more
Plaine Products are Gray Water Safe
We often get asked if Plaine Products are gray water safe, and we're happy to say the answer is yes! Whether you're using Plaine Products in the shower, in the bath, or to wash your hands, you can collect the runoff for other uses safely.What is Gray Water? Gray water, also known as greywater outside the US, refers to wastewater from sinks, showers, baths, washing machines, or dishwashers. i.e., all streams except for the wastewater from toilets. (Wastewater from toilets is known as blackwater.) Gray water can also be water collected from the rain in water barrels. In addition to being fecal-free, gray water also shouldn't have any heavy grease or toxic chemicals. As long as it meets these standards, gray water is safe for reuse for things like toilet flushing, landscaping or crop irrigation, and other non-drinking uses.As the news continues to remind us, global water resource supplies are worsening. Droughts in the Southwest and California have increased interest in water conservation. Reusing gray water is one good way to help solve this problem by reducing the demand for water supplies.What Can Gray Water be Used for? The simplest way to reuse gray water is to water plants or gardens. This can look like anything from keeping a bucket in the shower for excess water, to having arain barrel outside to catch rain, to configuring your plumbing to pipe gray water to where you want to use it.Depending on where you live, recycled gray water from showers and bathtubs can be used for flushing toilets, but you're going to have to investigate further if that solution is of interest. It's legal in most European and Australian jurisdictions but only on a state-by-state basis in the US.New ways to use gray water are coming online all of the time.IKEA is prototyping an easy-to-install shower system that would cycle water for reuse, reducing water consumption by 80 percent and energy consumption by 70 percent. They've been working on it since 2020 and it should be available soon.Why are Plaine Products Gray Water Safe? Plaine Products are made fromnatural ingredients which means that when they are washed down the drain, there are no toxic chemicals or toxins in the water to create problems. Detergents, like sodium laurel sulfate (SLS) or sodium laureate sulfate (SLES) that are in many mainstream cleaning and personal care products mean that water contained by those products would not be safe to water plants or gardens. In general, you want biodegradable personal care products, like Plaine Products, for any gray water uses.
Learn more
Get “Halloween Unready” With Plaine Products
You’ve slayed your Halloween makeup look, and now it’s time to take it all off! Costume makeup can be tough to remove and harsh on the skin, but we’ve got everything you need to get your skin back to its pre-Halloween beauty. Here’s how to get Halloween Unready with Plaine Products: Step 1: Beauty Oil Our Beauty Oil is extremely versatile and works well as a makeup remover. The formula can break down any oil or waxes in your makeup, and is the perfect first step of any unready routine. Use a cotton round and a few pumps of the oil and apply to the skin. Step 2: Face Wash After using the Beauty Oil to break down your makeup, follow up with our Face Wash to gently cleanse skin while removing dirt, oil and impurities. With daily use, it can even help refine skin’s tone and texture and fight the signs of aging! Step 3: Face Toner After all that scrubbing, reach for our Face Toner. Its unique green tea formula acts as an anti-inflammatory to soothe and calm skin irritations, reduce redness, and shrink pores naturally. Step 4: Moisturizer Lock in all the nutrients you just gave your skin with our Face Moisturizer. It’s blended with potent antioxidants and nutrients, and traps in moisture. Softer skin here you come! Share your best Halloween makeup looks with us onInstagram ,Facebook orTikTok !P.S. For a DIY, natural makeup remover using some simple ingredients, including Plaine Products’ face wash. be sure to check out this post!
Learn more
Sustainable Sleep Routine
Looking for ways to green your sleep routine? We’ve got you covered with eco-friendly tips to make bedtime the best (and greenest) part of your day. Try a Sustainable Sleepy Time Tea If you have trouble falling asleep, try an herbal tea like magnolia, lavender, or chamomile. But make sure those tea bags are plastic free! We love Higher Living Teas, or you can try making your own loose leaf tea. Sleepy Skincare Getting into a routine can help your body understand that it’s time to slow down. Try committing to a sustainable skincare routine to help your body and mind slow down: -cleanse with Plaine Products Face Wash -improve look and feel of skin with Plaine Products Face Toner -hydrate with Plaine Products Face Moisturizer -add in a few drops of Plaine Products Beauty Oil for added hydration Sink Into Sustainable Sheets Turn your bed into a sustainably soft oasis with a good set of sheets. We love American Blossom Linens— their products are grown, processed, finished, and shipped in the USA, drastically reducing their carbon footprint. The organic wool and cotton will help you drift off to a peaceful sleep. Bonus, we got you a 20% off code - use PLAINE20 for new, sustainable sheets! Shut Off The Tech We know it’s tempting, but turning off your technology before bed is one of the best ways to ensure a good night’s rest. Unplug your devices, put away your phone, and enjoy the sweet solemnity of bedtime. Sweet, green dreams everyone! xoxo
Learn more
A look at our new bottles!
At the core of Plaine Products is our mission to eliminate single-use plastics and to increase our bottle reuse. With that in mind, we are so excited to announce a new design for our bottles! This new look increases the lifespan of our bottles, resulting in even more reusability. The design evolution is happening in two ways that work together to ensure all of our bottles are reused as much as possible. Why Focus on Bottle Reuse? Plaine Products focuses on reuse for two reasons: to reduce plastic pollution and to avoid contributing to climate change. By reusing, we avoid pulling resources out of the earth to make new products. It also prevents the use of additional energy to recycle and reshape old bottles into new ones. Plastic is made from fossil fuels, so each time a plastic bottle is made, used, and sent to the landfill (where they’ll continue to wreak havoc on our environment for centuries to come!), additional greenhouse gasses are being released into the atmosphere. Our aluminum bottles, on the other hand, never need to end up in a landfill. Metals can be reused and recycled infinitely without quality loss. Despite this fact, recycling remains our last resort. For us, the more we reuse our bottles before we recycle them, the better. New Bottle Printing to Increase Lifespan We currently recycle approximately 20% of the bottles returned to us due to dents and chipping and/or scratching of the printed labels. Keeping in line with our mantra of progress over perfection, we wanted to do better. To reduce that number and to extend the life of our bottles in general, we worked with our manufacturer, Trivium, to source a printing option that’s similar to the printing on aluminum drink cans. Our new bottles are printed during the manufacturing process on the cylinder and then shaped, leading the print to be permanent. Paint rubbing off our old bottles (photo by @emma_sustainiacs) Our packaging is completely free of single-use plastic! As a small company, we are testing the new printed bottles on our most popular products: the 16 oz. shampoo and conditioner in both Rosemary Mint Vanilla and Citrus Lavender. We cannot wait for our new bottles to arrive at your door! New Labels to Enable Reuse of Older Bottles We’re so thrilled about this huge step towards progress and hope to be able to transition our entire line of products to the permanent print bottle one day. In the meantime, we’ve found a solution to match the look of our new bottles while ensuring that none of our current bottles go to waste! A sneak peek of our new and improved product line-up! In 2017, we started Plaine Products with just 3 products. Five years later, we now offer more than 30 individual products! With our new printing option, we wanted to better reflect the variety of product and scent options we now carry. Instead of our basic label on metal, you'll now find a soothing color palette expressed through our products. To match the look of the new, printed bottles we are adding labels to the rest of our products. These new labels will enable us to reuse the rest of the bottles we have, including the ones with chipped printing that would have previously been recycled. This also allows for our older shampoo and conditioner bottles to be repurposed for new products instead of being recycled. And a bonus—the labels should also help protect the aluminum from small dents and dings! Label Process - Applying new labels to old Plaine Products bottles To test the durability and longevity of our labels, we ran them through our industrial bottlewasher and found them to remain pristine even after 8+ washes. Once the bottles are finally ready to be recycled (hopefully after 10+ uses), we will be able to recycle the bottles through traditional recycling. We’ve ensured that our labels are recyclable through our membership with PACT Collective. The PACT Collective is a nonprofit that ends packaging waste in the beauty and wellness industry by finding solutions for hard-to-recycle materials; we work with them to recycle any broken pumps! This is a HUGE win for reuse and we believe it’ll take Plaine Products to the next level. We couldn’t have done this without you and your support. Thank YOU for refilling with us.
Learn more
Why We Choose Aluminum
We founded Plaine Products to provide natural, quality products in sustainable packaging, making it easier for everyone to use a little less plastic in their lives. But why did we choose aluminum? Read on to find out. Durability The heart of our model is reuse, so it’s important that our bottles can withstand being used multiple times by multiple customers. Aluminum is the perfect solution; it's lightweight but strong, easy to clean, and doesn’t break down easily like cheap plastics. Recyclability Plastic is notoriously under-recycled - in fact only about 9% of all plastic ever created has ever been recycled. That statistic is even worse in the United States, with only 6% of our plastic actually being made into new products. Aluminum is a totally different story. Aluminum is much easier to recycle, and it does not lose quality when you recycle it, unlike plastic. While our bottles are meant to be reused, when it is time to retire a bottle, we can breathe easy knowing it will actually be recycled. Health Safety Aluminum offers a safe, chemical-free option for our packaging. Plastic, a petroleum derivative, is linked to dangerous toxins and various negative health outcomes. We pledge to keep our products as safe as possible, so plastic bottles are not an option. Aluminum has been proven safe for packaging use, and any negative health impacts of aluminum are due to excessively high exposure levels (which is uncommon). Our aluminum bottles have an internal cosmetic-grade liner to make sure there is no leaching into the products. The liner is made from epoxy phenolic resin which is BPA free and has been determined food safe by German and US FDA standards. For us, the choice is simple. Our bottles are durable, easy to reuse and recycle, and better for the planet. We choose to reuse, refuse, reduce, repair, and recycle aluminum. Join us!
Learn more
A Guide to Safe and Sustainable Summer Haircare
Ah, summertime: the season of salt, sand, sun, and…supreme hair damage. While using eco-friendly shampoos and conditioners is one way to heal hair from exposure to the elements, sometimes summer hair care demands a little more. You’re already in your sustainable swimwear, so hold your breath and get ready to dive into how to keep your hair healthy during the scorching sunny months. How Often Should You Wash Your Hair? Summertime equals sweat and all the au naturale smells that go with it. And no matter how good your eco-friendly deodorant is, your showers per week ratio will no doubt increase. But is that a bad thing? Besides the environmental considerations of using more water, showering can actually be detrimental to your hair. And frequent washing strips your hair and scalp of its natural oils, which are critical for its health. Two to three washes per week are plenty. Even if you’re putting your organic body wash to work more often, you don’t have to wash your hair every time you shower. Tie it up in a bun or don a fashionable shower cap so you can scrub the sunscreen off with your sustainable face wash without unnecessarily drying out your hair. Or if your scalp feels a little sweaty, go ahead and rinse it without the lather. Cold water will do enough to wash away surface-level dirt while maintaining your hair’s natural moisture. Just be sure to always wash your hair after salt and chlorine exposure. Washing after the latter is especially important for those with blonde or bleached hair, since the copper algaecides present in many chlorinated pools may cause a greenish tint. If you notice this, try rinsing your hair with lemon juice. Style Your Hair with a Little SPF SPF? Isn’t that just for your skin? We’re surrounded by constant reminders of the importance of donning sunscreen on our skin, but few seek to remind us that the sun is equally damaging to our heads. Not only does it dry out and potentially bleach hair, but it’s even more damaging to the skin beneath. If you’ve ever had a sunburnt scalp you’ll know it’s THE WORST, especially when it begins to peel. Just as zero waste sunscreen can prevent the bleaching of coral reefs, sun-protective hair care can prevent unwanted bleaching of your hair and cell damage to your scalp. The first layer of protection should be to keep your hair shaded, so befriend the braided look and break out those wide-brimmed fair trade hats! It’s okay to flaunt your favorite hairstyle unobstructed, but if you’re doing it under the sun and on the daily, be sure you’re using products that protect your hair and scalp from harmful UV rays. While many mainstream UV protective shampoos are filled with chemicals and other ingredients to avoid in skincare and haircare, organic and natural shampoo brands instead rely on plant-based formulas that contain natural SPF properties. Plaine Products’ refillable shampoo, for instance, contains red algae extract, green tea, and Vitamin E, all of which bear natural SPF ratings to shield your hair. Its other Vitamin C-rich ingredients—such as organic aloe, camellia oil, and papaya and pineapple pulp extracts—further protect the scalp’s cells from free radical oxidation. Hydrate, Hydrate, Hydrate Just like your plastic-free water bottle should be your constant companion in the dehydrating heat of summer, a solid hair hydration plan should be, too. Hair can’t sweat but that doesn’t mean it’s not losing moisture as quickly as your skin on a 100° day. Sun, salt, and chlorine are the trifecta of a dehydrated ‘do. So if you’re planning on spending a day at the beach or your local pool, plan to either wear a protective conditioning mask while you’re out (just make sure it’s natural so as not to pollute the water) or give your hair a healthy rehydrating treatment after. A good zero-waste conditioner not only contains ingredients that hydrate, working symbiotically with your hair to seal in its own natural oils, but is also a waste-free alternative. Look for things like aloe vera, shea butter, vegetable glycerin, and seed oils— all present in Plaine Products’ conditioner! Don’t forget to drink plenty of water, as that helps with skin and hair hydration, too. How to Deal With Sun-Damaged Hair If you spend the majority of your summers outside soaking in the sun, your hair will inevitably endure some damage by the time the leaves begin to turn color. So, in addition to mitigating sun damage by following the steps above, there are a few post-sun repair strategies that can help restore your hair's natural moisture barrier. First, stop using heat treatment. Hair dryers, straighteners, and curling irons exacerbate the damage so give your locks a loving break from the heat. Be gentle about brushing, too. Between the wind, salt, and chlorine, tangles and bird's nests are an inescapable summertime fact, so be patient when using your eco-friendly hair brush to work out the knots. Because your hair is generally more dry (and brittle), you risk breakage. In addition to using clean eco-friendly hair products, you can also treat your hair with the occasional pure ingredient mask. Aloe Vera, banana, egg yolk, coconut oil, and olive oil can each individually be added directly to the hair to remedy sun damage. Massaging into the scalp for a few minutes increases blood circulation which can also heal damaged skin underneath. Final Thoughts on Sustainable Summer Haircare Summer is about being outside, lying on your sustainable beach towel while soaking in some Vitamin D (and Sea), and having fun—but your hair shouldn’t have to pay a price. Fortunately, it doesn't have to. Besides, summertime isn’t synonymous with dry, damaged hair. With the right natural products and a little bit of hair-ful forward thinking, you can strut into autumn with a natural bronze glow and a shiny head of nourished hair. This was a guest post by Sustainable Jungle. Sustainable Jungle shares sustainability-related ideas, tips, tricks, products, brands, and stories about people & organizations doing meaningful work to better our planet.
Learn more
Need a return label?