Cleaning Your Body Not Your Dishes With Ecover

I don't know about you but Ecover is a pretty familiar name to me, like many others I've used their cleaning products in the past to wash my dishes (I particularly like their washing up liquid), and in my washing machine. Based in France and in Belgium Ecover is one of the world leaders in ecologically sound domestic cleaning products, producing products that have only a minimal if any negative contribution to the environment. What I didn't know that was that Ecover also has recently started to produce a personal care line based upon the same principles -using plant based ingredients, focusing on biodegradability of both the product itself and its packaging, and above being effective for purpose. The personal care range comprises of two shower gels, and two hand soaps, in a Lavender and Aloe Vera fragrance and Citrus and Orange Blossom. A few months ago I was very kind sent both a shower gel and a hand soap in the Lavender and Aloe Vera fragrance, broken ankles aside I've had a good chance to try the products now so it's time for a review :)

Ecover Ecological Shower Gel - Lavender and Aloe Vera

Packaged in fully recyclable plastic, this shower gel comes in the traditional style dispenser with a hook style cap that can be fitted on either the top of the bottom of the bottle. I love these hook style bottles it so convenient to hand them on the shower rack or shower fitting essential for someone like me who wears specs and can't find things very well without them x You can hang this up quite easily for some reason the shower gel doesn't come out unless you squeeze it - clever eh ;)

Right onto the product inside I chose the Lavender and Aloe fragrance, it smells quite strongly of lavender, not a old sickly smell, instead a super refreshing, zingy almost antiseptic lavender - I love the smell of this relaxing but at the same time invigorating if that isn't a contradiction lol!

It has a thickish texture for a shower products and is quite pearly white in colour

To be honest you don't very much to produce a nice gentle, foam as you can see here

and you can also use this product in the bath, and it says you can also use to wash your hair, I haven't tried that personally so I can't say but I don't see what harm it would do

I have to say I really loved this shower gel so much so that it actually appeared in my February Favourites video - I loved the smell, and it left my skin super clean and fresh, but not tight or dry - it was a real pick me up on my post hospital days x

Ecover Ecological Hand Soap - Lavender and and Aloe Vera

Well as you probably guessed from my recent My Pure post I love hand washes. I find them much more hygienic than a bar of soap, and a lot easier to use

The packaging of this hand wash isn't anything different but it's practical and it works, it's a basic lockable pump action dispenser that you can use quite easily with your hand or even your forearm

It smells exactly like the shower gel with a strong, fresh Lavender fragrance, that has a tendency to linger on the skin. For that reason I think this is probably best as a hand wash by your bathroom sink as opposed to a kitchen sink where Lavender flavoured sandwiches probably wouldn't go down to well ;) The wash itself is quite runny as you can see here, and it's a lot clearer than the shower gel

Again though it foams easily and again you don't need a lot.

The smell as I say does linger for a few minutes but it washes away easily and the hands and left clean,, but not overly dry or tight. I also used this to clean my make up brushes with great results x I have to say again I like this hand wash my only issue is that for me it would have to be bathroom only product due to the smell, so it lacks the versatility of say the A'kin product I recently reviewed.

Ingredients

You may have noticed that in neither of the product reviews I mentioned much about the ingredients. The ingredients in both products are pretty similar so I thought I'd talk about them together. Ingredients are very important to Ecover as well as wanting to create products that are gentle on the skin, they are also extremely conscious about the environmental impact of the products

Shower Gel

Hand Soap

Both of these products are declared as pH neutral, which basically means that they shouldn't upset the natural balance of our skin, Ecover also say that these products are therefore suitable for sensitive skin, as they lack petrochemical ingredients, that's obviously a good thing do we really want a byproduct of what makes a car engine go on our skin - no I think in this day and age we don't. The lack of petrochemical ingredients in these products also means that they are protecting the wider environment. Ecover are extremely conscious of the environmental impact of their products and this is evident by the fact that both of these products are fully biodegradable once they go down our drains, and they have the minimum possible negative impact on aquatic life. It's quite scary really I've never thought about what a product does once it goes down the plughole, so these products have really made me think about what actually goes into products and the harm they can do. So now we know what they leave out what do they put in, well they do use a fair few plant based ingredients including Aloe Vera, Wheat Protein and Vegetable Glycerin, but perhaps the biggest surprise in these two products was the inclusion of Sodium Lauryl Sulfate. Giving the natural / caring and gentle nature of the company and the products the inclusion of SLS wasn't something that I expected. Obviously this throws their claim that the products are suitable for sensitive skin up in the air a bit, an increasing number of people can't tolerate SLS in their skin, hair and body care products. I was disappointed by this but like most companies Ecover is forever changing and they have recently developed an entirely new plant based surfactant (detergent) in their cleaning product line so hopefully it won't be long before we see changes elsewhere in their line.

Overall I enjoyed using both of these products a lot I personally have no issue with SLS and found that the products did what they said, and as I say I loved the smell, and I think the prices are really reasonable too. Ecover Shower Gel in Lavender and Aloe Vera retails at around £3.69 for 250ml and the Ecover Lavender and Aloe Vera Hand Soap retails at around £2.99 for 250ml. For more information on Ecover - the brand, their philosophy and charitable work, their products and of course stockist information please checkout the Ecover website x

(Both Ecover Products Were Provided By PR For Review Purposes)