01The water problem, stated plainly
A shampoo, a shower gel, a face wash and most conditioners are predominantly water. That water is packaged in plastic, put on a lorry, driven across the country, stored in a warehouse and carried home, and then it goes down a drain that is already connected to a water supply.
Framed that way, the inefficiency is obvious, and it is the single largest structural problem in the category. Solid and concentrated formats attack it directly, which is why they deserve more attention than the material of the bottle. They change what is being transported rather than what it is transported in.
02The distinction nobody explains
Solid cleansing bars come in two families that behave very differently. Traditional soap bars are made by saponification and are alkaline, typically well above skin surface pH. Syndet bars are built from synthetic detergents and are formulated closer to skin pH.
Most complaints about shampoo bars leaving hair waxy or straw like, or facial bars leaving skin tight, trace to using a soap based bar, sometimes in hard water where soap forms an insoluble residue. A syndet bar behaves much more like the liquid product it replaces. The distinction is almost never printed on the pack, and it is the single most useful thing to know before buying one. The underlying surfactant chemistry is in what a face wash is made of.
03Hard water, which changes the answer regionally
Much of England has hard water, and hardness interacts strongly with soap based products, producing the residue commonly described as scum. In hard water areas a soap based shampoo bar is more likely to disappoint, and users frequently resort to an acidic rinse to strip the residue.
This is a good example of why a general recommendation fails: the same product performs differently in Glasgow and in Cambridge. Anyone whose first experience of a shampoo bar was poor in a hard water area has a specific reason for that result and is not simply doing it wrong.
04Hair type and the fair comparison
Solid formats suit some hair better than others. Short hair, which is what a large share of men have, is the easiest case: less length means less distribution difficulty and less need for conditioning. Long, coarse, curly or chemically treated hair is harder, because even distribution matters more and because conditioning needs are greater.
For most men with short hair, a syndet shampoo bar in a soft water area is a straightforward substitution with no performance penalty. That is a narrower claim than the category usually makes and it is one that holds up.
05The practical failure mode
A bar left sitting in water dissolves. This is the most common reason people abandon solid formats, and it is entirely a storage problem. A draining dish, a rack, or keeping the bar out of the direct shower stream resolves it, and a bar stored properly lasts considerably longer than users expect.
The related irritation is travel, where bars are actually advantageous, since they are not liquids for the purposes of cabin baggage rules. A tin is sufficient, and the format removes the decanting problem that otherwise afflicts anyone travelling with liquids.
06Toothpaste tablets, and the one thing to check
Toothpaste tubes are among the worst performing formats in household recycling, being multi layer laminates with a plastic cap. Tablets and powders in a tin or jar remove that entirely, and the environmental case is straightforward.
The variable worth checking is fluoride. Fluoride toothpaste has a substantial evidence base for preventing tooth decay, and NHS guidance is specific about it. Some tablet and powder products contain fluoride and some do not, and switching format should not become an unintentional switch away from a well evidenced intervention. This is the clearest case in the article where an environmental improvement and a health outcome can be traded without the buyer noticing.
07Deodorant, which is mostly a packaging question
Balm and stick deodorants are anhydrous, so the water argument does not apply, and the environmental question is about the applicator. Cardboard tubes, refillable cases and jars all exist, and all are improvements on a plastic stick or an aerosol can from a materials standpoint.
Two things worth separating: deodorant reduces odour by acting on the bacteria that produce it, antiperspirant reduces sweating using aluminium salts. Products marketed as natural deodorants are generally deodorants rather than antiperspirants, which is a functional difference and not a minor one for anyone who chose an antiperspirant for a reason.
08Where the format cannot go
Not everything can be made solid. Sunscreens require a specific and even film across skin to deliver their tested protection, and stick formats are useful for targeted areas but harder to apply at the density testing assumes. Products with unstable actives need protection from air and light that a bar in a tin does not provide. Water based emulsions cannot simply be dehydrated.
The reasonable position is to convert what converts well, which in a male routine is usually the shower products, and leave the rest alone. Substituting a solid product for a well evidenced liquid one, particularly sun protection, trades an outcome for a format. The sun protection argument is in sunscreen for men.
09Where this lands
Waterless formats are the most structurally significant sustainability change available in grooming, because they attack transport and packaging together rather than swapping one container for another. They are also the change most likely to fail on first use, for reasons that are predictable and fixable: the wrong type of bar, a hard water area, or a bar left in a puddle.
Our position is that shower products are the right place to start, that syndet formulations are the right choice for most people, and that no format change is worth making in a category where a tested performance claim, such as sun protection, would be lost. That is how we treat the category in the transparency index.