Sometimes they just come over us, these trends: we remember when suddenly everyone was talking about the world-improving qualities of electric cars - not to mention the child labour involved in extracting the lithium needed for the batteries in Africa and the problem of disposing of the batteries. Or when a few years ago Protestants also walked around in colourful "Pope mules", some speculated that tattoo studios would soon be asking for quotes from the Old Testament.

Currently, Style PASS is observing the trend towards "solid shampoos". The square or round pieces, usually packed in cardboard or wrapped in paper, look like conventional soaps, but are not to be confused with "hair soaps": Ingredients and chemical formula are different. Style PASS asked around and asked: Does the hype about solid shampoos really live up to its promise?

The well-known beauty influencer "Curlandro", who has turned his curly hair into a marketing tool and draws attention to his Instagram page with aloe vera treatments and cool braided styles, goes into raptures when Style PASS asks him about the new trend. At first, he was sceptical whether he would be able to get his curly locks properly clean with the new product, but then the wow effect: "The end result was surprisingly good and equal in quality to a liquid shampoo! What I love most about solid shampoos is that they don't take up much space in hand luggage when travelling - and they don't fall under the liquid limit when travelling by air!"

Stiftung Warentest gave the trend a competent once-over

First of all, Stiftung Warentest points out the difference between "solid shampoos" and "hair soaps" to Style PASS, because we had not checked the difference at first glance in the drugstore spotting ourselves: the latter are oils or fats "saponified" with lye, the other are quasi-liquid shampoos only in handy soap format, these have simply had the water removed. When lathered with water, however, they develop similar qualities to their liquid counterparts - but the clear advantage for the dry products: They do not contain any preservatives and thus pollute the waste water much less.

Stiftung Warentest states: "Including hair washing, solid and liquid shampoos have almost the same impact on the environment. But production, packaging, transport and disposal have a greater impact on liquid shampoos than on solid ones."

Becoming a do-gooder with the right wash

Those who choose solid shampoo for sustainability reasons should not stop at the purchase, Style PASS has learned from Stiftung Warentest. Because the foundation had the products professionally tested by hairdressers. If you want to learn from the professionals, you should consistently turn off the tap when shampooing - because hairdressers only used 5 litres of water in the test, but the test subjects used three times as much, a whopping 15 litres. The experts also used significantly fewer products for shampooing than the normal people. Here, too, the rule is: less is more, because diligent lathering does not produce shinier or more voluminous hair in the end result.

Thomas Koppmann from Stiftung Warentest explains to Style PASS what customers should look for when buying solid shampoos: "Shampoos should not contain critical ingredients such as the fragrance butylphenyl/methypropional, also known as lilial, or the silicone cyclopentasiloxane, or D5 for short, and those with fine hair should generally avoid hair care products containing silicones. You can recognise silicones in the list of ingredients by the suffix "-icone" or "-iloxane"." The test revealed that a product of the "Lush" brand contained Lilial - this ingredient is suspected of impairing reproductive ability.

When asked by Style PASS, Rossmann explains that there are currently 42 (!) solid shampoos in the assortment of the successful drugstore chain: "The share of the total assortment is still comparatively small. However, solid shampoos are enjoying increasing popularity, so we can expect demand to rise in the future!"

For the right world-saving programme, the Yves Rocher brand has expanded the trend around solid shampoos. There, marketing points out, among other things, the benefit when it comes to the packaging of the in-house "Green Heroes" line: "The packaging of the solid shampoos consists of 60 per cent recycled cardboard and is 100 per cent recyclable." And Yves Rocher calculates: "That means a saving of 30 tonnes of plastic per year!"


Anyone who thinks he or she has already done enough good for the world by buying a solid shampoo is now sure to be blown completely out of the Pope's mules by the Yves Rocher "Plant for Life" campaign: "For every solid shampoo purchased, Yves Rocher plants a tree ... Over 100 million trees have already been planted!!!!! That is so unbelievably great. The trees are planted mainly in those countries where reforestation makes the most sense for the world's climate. For example, in Ethiopia!" According to Yves Rocher, no less than 40 million trees (!) have already been planted there.

Style PASS itself is perplexed by the research result and recommends solid shampoos as a trend without unwanted side effects.

Hair Influencer "Curlandro" in one of his Youtube videos