I Visited Plaine Products HQ. Here’s My Review of This Low-Tox, Refillable Hair & Skincare Brand.

I’ve worked in this sustainable, low-tox world for a long time now, which means I’ve looked at and tried hundreds if not thousands of brands.

As I’ve said before, there aren’t that many brands that rise to the occasion when it comes to both sustainability initiatives (like low waste/low-plastic) AND non-toxic ingredients.

There are a lot of zero-waste brands out there that contain not-great ingredients like skin irritants or endocrine-disruptors. And then on the flip side, there are a lot of great non-toxic brands out there that are heavy on the plastic packaging.

So I’m always excited when I find a brand that checks all of the boxes (and actually WORKS!). I was even more excited to find out that this brand—Plaine Products—is local to me!

I visited their headquarters in Cincinnati, Ohio, and today I’m giving you a little peek behind the curtain. I’ll also tell you my honest review of all of the Plaine Products hair and skincare I tried, complete with all of the pros and cons you might want to know as you consider whether or not this brand is for you!

P.S. If you decide to buy from Plaine Products, you can get 20% off your order with the code THEFILTERY20.

This guide contains product recommendations and we may receive compensation if you purchase through certain links. As always, we only make recommendations that are genuine!

Things I Love About Plaine Products

Plaine Products is a personal care brand that offers refillable personal care products. They started with hair care (shampoo, conditioner, and styling products), and now they have other skin care products as well, including body lotion, face wash, moisturizer, and more.

It was started by two sisters, Alison and Lindsey, who honestly just wanted to do their part to reduce the amount of plastic in the world.

I really like Plaine Products. I’ll go through each of the products I’ve tried in more detail below, but first, here are some of the main reasons why I like the brand in general:

Natural & non-toxic ingredients.

Plaine Products uses primarily natural ingredients. Their formulations are pretty minimalistic, so you don’t have to go scrunching your brows up trying to sort through a long list of mystery ingredients.

You can look up all of the ingredients on this page. Or, each bottle has a QR code that you can scan with your phone to look up the most updated formulation for that product.

All of their products are:

• Free of sulfates, parabens, phthalates, silicones, and palm oil
• Naturally-scented using pure essential oils and aromatic isolates derived solely from natural, raw botanical sources. All oils are certified to be free of synthetic ingredients. (They have Unscented, too.)
• Vegan & cruelty-free
• Designed to biodegrade
• Baby safe and hypoallergenic

They have a bunch of third-party certifications, too, including:

• B Corp
• Leaping Bunny Cruelty-Free and Vegan
• 1% for the Planet
• Certified Women-Owned by WBENC

Low-waste, low-plastic, & refillable.

The bottles themselves are made of aluminum and the pumps/sprayers are made of plastic. When you buy your first bottle, you get a pump with it. But then when you order your next bottle, you keep your pump and send the empty bottle back to them. (So you only buy one pump and keep using it.)

When you buy your new bottle, they send a shipping label back with it. You just switch the pump to the new bottle, put the old bottle in the cardboard box the new bottle came in, stick the shipping label on it, and drop it off at the post office.

The packaging is plastic-free, too—it’s just cardboard.

Their stuff works!

A product can be as eco-friendly as possible, but if it doesn’t work, then it’s pointless. I’ll get to this more in my review of the specific products below, but their products can truly compete with ‘conventional’ ones in terms of quality and effectiveness. The shampoo gets my hair clean and the conditioner actually gets my tangles out and smooths my hair.

It’s husband-approved (& kid-friendly!).

Plaine Products is great for the whole family—kids included. It’s very “normie-friendly,” meaning there’s no learning curve when switching from conventional versions to these products. For example, a lot of people don’t want to get used to using a zero-waste shampoo bar—and that’s okay! The Plaine Products shampoo works the exact same way that your conventional Pantene does (or whatever you were using before).

My husband likes suds, so he doesn’t always love the shampoo & body wash I put in the shower. 😆 (Despite what we’ve been taught, lather isn’t necessary to clean something—it really just makes us feel cleaner.)

My husband immediately approved of the Plaine Products foaminess. When the first bottle was almost out, he requested we re-buy it. Sometimes we have to compromise when it comes to low-tox products in our home (IYKYK), so whenever I find a product that is truly non-toxic AND my husband actually likes, that’s a win!

Locally-owned & operated.

Okay, so this one might be applicable to me and not you. But I feel really proud to have Plaine Products based my home city! Not only does it help support the local economy, but it also helps to cut down on the overall carbon footprint and increases supply chain transparency.

Travel-friendly.

I travel a lot, so I like that they offer 2.5 oz bottles for pretty much all of the products. (Those little single-use plastic shampoo bottles might be cute, but they are far from eco-friendly!)

I also like the smaller bottles for some of the products that I don’t use as often, like the Hair Repair. I can save some money on the smaller bottle and not worry about it going bad if I don’t go through it fast enough.

They’re always innovating and expanding their collection.

The Plaine Products team started with shampoo and conditioner, but they’ve added to so much to their collection since then.

They also regularly introduce new scents, too. So you can choose based on your preferences. (They have Unscented options as well.)

I Visited the Plaine Products HQ!

As I said, I was so excited that the Plaine Products headquarters is in my home city of Cincinnati. Cincy is a great mid-sized city with a lot to offer, but it’s very rare to come across a small, sustainable brand and find out they’re local.

So of course, I had to go visit them!

Alison welcomed me into their HQ and I loved seeing where the magic happens. ‘Magic’ being not only where they fulfill orders but also where they wash and refill the bottles.

When you go through the doors from the small front lobby, you’ll see their big inventory room, where they keep a lot of product, including huge buckets of bulk product that gets sent to zero waste and sustainable boutiques throughout the country. (See if there’s a store near you if you want to cut down on emissions and support a local shop.)

In the next room, you’ll find order fulfillment. Here they’ve got bottles and bottles of product ready to be packaged up and shipped to you. I love the fact that the Plaine Products fulfillment team mostly consists of local moms who want some part-time work that’s flexible enough to work around their kids’ schedules. When I visited, the women were just in there chatting and it seemed like such an easy-going place to work. I mean, if you’re going to spill tea with your friends, why not package up some zero-waste shampoo at the same time?!

The back room is where the bottles get returned and washed so they can be refilled. This is my favorite part: they have these washing machines that were specially-designed for them in Canada. The bottles fit perfectly inside so they can be scrubbed clean and dried thoroughly before being refilled and reused for the next customer.

Seeing this in action just proves to me that we (as a society) do not have to be so dependent on single-use bottles and other packaging. We can put better systems in place to move toward a more circular, reusable consumer economy. I believe that if a smaller brand like Plaine Products can do it, then it can be scaled. And if it can be scaled, then it can be made more affordable. Hopefully some of the big brands (*ahem, P&G is also based here in Cincy*) will take note.

Are There Any *Not-Great* Ingredients To Worry About?

As I mentioned, Plaine Products’ formulations use primarily natural and non-toxic ingredients. A few of their do contain ethoxylated ingredients, which can come with contamination concerns.

The problem is not with the ingredients themselves, but rather how they are produced. These substances are made using ethylene oxide (a carcinogen) and 1,4 dioxane (a probable carcinogen) and so final products can potentially be contaminated with small amounts of these chemicals.

Ethoxylated ingredients are very common in personal care and cleaning products, and it’s difficult to avoid them completely. Personally, I do try to minimize them when possible, but I don’t avoid them 100%. Plaine Products doesn’t use very many of them.

Here are the products that contain ethoxylated ingredients:

• Phenoxyethanol: Purple shampoo, 2-in-1 hair & body wash, face moisturizer, styling gel. (Members can read a deep dive into phenoxyethanol here.)
• Polysorbate (20 or 80): Styling gel, hand wash

There are also a few products that contain “natural fragrance ingredients” which mean that not all of the ingredients are 100% disclosed. They are all-natural though, which means there are no synthetics. But if that still bothers you, then just choose one of the other options (or go with Unscented).

The products that contain ‘natural fragrance’ are: Cherry Almond shampoo, conditioner, & hand wash; Citrus Lavender conditioner (the Citrus Lavender shampoo does not); Purple shampoo; Sage hair + body wash; and the Meadow deep conditioner.

My Honest Plaine Products Review

Alright, now lets get into my thoughts on each product I’ve tried.

The pricing below is accurate at the time of publication, but if you’re reading this from the future, check the website for the most updated pricing.

I put ~approximate~ cost because the prices can change a little bit depending on a few things:

• You can save 10% by signing up for Subscribe & Save.
• If you need a pump, it’s an extra $0.75.
• Or if you buy in bulk, it’s cheaper per oz.

Shampoo & Conditioner

~$30 for 16 oz

Scent options: Rosemary Mint Vanilla (my favorite!), Citrus Lavender, Cherry Almond, or Unscented

First of all, the Rosemary Mint Vanilla scent is my favorite. I love it—I chose it for my shampoo, conditioner, and body lotion. It’s really refreshing and has a clean, energizing vibe. I am sensitive to smells, but this one is perfect. It’s very pleasant, but not overpowering.

As I mentioned before, the shampoo is very ‘normie-friendly’, meaning it works just like regular shampoo. Put a few pumps into your hands, lather up, and rinse. Easy, peasy.

Now, it’s not easy to find a conditioner that is totally non-toxic and works well. A lot of the low-tox conditioners still either have some sort of not-great preservative in it (I guess conditioner formulas are prone to bacteria growth?), OR they have something like behentrimonium chloride, which is a conditioning agent that can be irritating to the skin/respiratory system. Or they just don’t work very well!

Not the case with Plaine Products. They somehow figured out how to make a conditioner that really works to smooth my hair and doesn’t contain any super harsh preservatives or allergens.

(By the way, if you have blonde or gray hair, check out their purple shampoo.)

Will I re-buy it? Definitely. I already have!

*By the way, a quick note about the pumps! Sometimes they can be a little finicky to close and then re-open. All you have to do to re-open them is screw the pump on the bottle as tight as you can and then turn the pump back the other way. I don’t know why this was so difficult for me to figure out. 😅

Body Wash & Hand Soap

~$30 for 16 oz (body wash) | ~$20 for 16 oz (hand wash)

To mix things up a little bit, I went with the Citrus Lavender scent for my body wash and hand soap. I really like this scent too! It’s refreshing and energizing, like the Rosemary Mint Vanilla. I would say the citrus notes are more noticeable than the lavender.

The Body Wash and the Hand Wash are very similar in the formulation and feel. They lather great and are very soft. My husband has more sensitive skin than I do and tends to get some eczema and he really likes this body wash.

Will I re-buy it? Yep! We already re-purchased the body wash and will probably re-buy the hand soap too when it runs out.

Body Lotion

~$30 for 16 oz

Once again: I love the Rosemary Mint Vanilla smell. This is a great morning/daytime lotion. You’ve not only got the energizing scent, but it’s also not greasy at all. It’s light and soaks in easily so you can get dressed and get on with your day.

Will I re-buy it? Yes. I like to have at least two lotion options lying around: one that’s lightweight and non-greasy, and one that’s more of a thicker, deep skin-conditioner. This Plaine Products one will be my go-to lightweight one.

Face Wash, Toner, & Moisturizer

$15 (face wash), $13 (toner), $22 (moisturizer)

The Face Wash, Toner, Moisturizer combo is a great minimalistic skincare routine for someone who wants to take care of their face without a bunch of bells and whistles.

The Face Wash is great—just like the shampoo and body wash, it lathers well and gets the job done. It’s a great ‘standard’ cleanser that can take the place of something like Cerave or Neutrogena or whatever.

The Toner is nice as well. It’s got a light, refreshing scent to it. It sprays on so you don’t have to worry about using a cotton round. And it can double as a midday face refresher if that’s something you like to use.

The moisturizer, like the body lotion, is a nice morning/daytime option. It’s one of the lightest moisturizers that’s currently in my arsenal, which is great because I hate putting a heavy/oily face moisturizer on unless it’s nighttime. Like a lot of the other products I’ve mentioned, it’s got a light scent that’s really nice but not overpowering at all.

As I mentioned above, the moisturizer does contain phenoxyethanol, which may not be ideal for some, especially since it’s a leave-on product. (But, I do think it’s also more necessary for lighter-weight moisturizers because there’s more water involved. More water = more chance for mold/bacteria growth, which I do not want.)

Will I re-buy it? Yes, I would. I’ll probably re-buy the face wash and moisturizer for my husband because he likes the minimalistic stuff. For me, I’m starting to get more into anti-aging skincare, so these products might not be my go-to for the long-term. But I would definitely still use them for travel and things like that.

Beauty Oil

~$25 for 2.5 oz

I’ve been using this for my nightly gua sha! It smells really good—it’s very light and relaxing.

This is a great all-purpose oil that can be used on the face, hair, or body. I personally don’t use oil in my hair very often (it’s oily enough as-is!). But I do use it on my face and body a lot, either in addition to or in place of a lotion/moisturizer.

This is great for travel because it’s a small bottle that you can use as a face moisturizer, hand/body lotion, etc.

It’s got sunflower seed oil, which is good for inflammation, olive-derived squalane for skin-hydration, green tea leaf extract for antioxidants, rosehip oil for brightening skin and improving texture, and more.

I will say, I think this is the most expensive product they have, per ounce. (Probably because it’s packed with so many nourishing oils.)

Will I re-buy it? Yes, I would!

Sea Salt Hair Spray

~$25 for 10 oz

I have natural waves so I love a good salt spray—especially in the summer time when I can let my hair air dry more often.

I don’t use hair spray a lot but I actually started reaching for this when I was in need of hair spray and I actually really like using it for this purpose. It’s got a light hold that adds some texture and volume to my hair. If you’re looking for something with a super strong hold, this might not be it. But I personally really like that it can serve several purposes at once: enhance curls, add volume & texture, reduce frizz, and add a light hold to the style.

Will I re-buy it? Yes, especially for the summertime.

Styling Gel

~$30 for 10 oz

I don’t use styling gel very often, but I can say this gel works great for a slicked-back pony! It holds well but it’s not hard when it dries (which is something I find annoying about conventional hair gel).

Maybe someday I’ll find the time to actually get more into encouraging my curls and I’ll see how this styling gel might work to hold curls. If I ever get around to it, I’ll definitely update this and let you know how it goes.

I will say that this is not a great replacement for pomade, according to my husband. He uses a thicker pomade and this gel was too liquid-y for him.

Will I re-buy it? Probably not in the near future, to be honest. I just don’t use styling gel often enough and this isn’t a good fit for my husband.

Hair Repair

~$38 for 10 oz

Am I the only one who’s sometimes too lazy to condition my hair in the shower? If I’m in a hurry but my hair needs washed, I’ll just shampoo it and then spray this Hair Repair afterward in place of conditioner.

This is another multi-purpose product that can not only be used as a detangler, but also as a heat protectant, to help repair split ends, or just to add some shine. I love a good multi-purpose product.

Will I re-buy it? Yes, but I will probably just keep the smaller bottle (2.5 oz) because I don’t use it super frequently.

Pros & Cons

Here are the potential pros & cons of Plaine Products in a nutshell, from my POV:

Who is Plaine Products For

In short, Plaine Products is a great fit for anyone looking to reduce plastic waste without compromising on clean ingredients or performance. Whether you’re new to low-tox living or already deep in the world of ingredient-checking and refill systems, this brand offers a practical, family-friendly way to make the switch.

Where To Buy Plaine Products

If you buy it straight from their website you can get 20% off (with code THEFILTERY20), but if you’d prefer, you can also order from Amazon or any of these small shops.

If you have any more questions about Plaine Products that weren’t answered here, let me know in the comments below and I’ll try to answer them!