Chemicals aren’t the key to a healthy scalp.

Everything we touch seems to have been doused in chemicals, manufactured in gigantic factories across the globe, and produced with no regard for the environment. But it doesn’t have to be that way, and the change can start from the top (of your head). Natural hair products can stay local, be eco-friendly and better for your health. If it seems too good to be true, here are seven reasons to go natural.

1. Cut on plastic

Mainstream hair products tend to be kept in hard plastic shells, which are not always recyclable. Labels, wrapping, and promotional materials all end up being plastic-based. Green tailor’shandmade natural shampoo bars, on the other hand, are shipped in a recyclable, plastic-free covering.

2. Go Vegan

Your shampoo and conditioner might be both animal-based and animal-tested. Animal by-products, such as pig based stearic or keratin are often found in hair products. Many beauty and hygiene products from major brands are still tested on animals, particularly when they’re sold in Asian markets. Pantene, Garnier, Head & Shoulders and Sunsilk have all beenreported to test some of their products on animals.

If you get Green Tailor’s virgin olive oil and cocoa butter shampoo bar, however, you can be sure that you’re getting a cruelty free product. Thisall-natural dry hair shampoo bar is also cruelty-free.

3. Stay local

Chemicals are global. Sulfates, parabens, and silicone are all sourced worldwide and are all present in your shampoo (we’ll get to this next). Getting raw materials to the factory has a carbon cost and getting the products to shops piles up on that environmental impact. The further away your hair products are produced, the more they hurt the planet.

That’s why Green Tailor uses naturally sourced local ingredients for its shampoo bars. Thevirgin olive oil and grape seed extract shampoo bar, just to name one, is handmade in Portugal.

4. Avoid chemicals

Have you read the label? There’s a lot of long names you should be looking out for, and brands won’t explicitly name many of the chemicals they use for your shampoo and conditioner.

Sulfates are harsh cleaning agents, and theymake your hair brittle. Parabens are preservatives and have beenlinked to breast cancer. Sodium chloride thickens the shampoo and makes your scalp dry and itchy. Formaldehydeincreases the risk of cancer. Dimethiconeclogs your pores. Triclosan is so bad it’s beenbanned in soap, but it’s still legal in shampoo. Synthetic fragrances and colors just mean petroleum.

If that list scares you, there’s a way to relax: go natural.

5. Long term effectiveness

You want your shampoo and conditioner to keep working year after year. But some chemical-based products can have reverse effects over the years. If you want consistency, look for something like Green Tailor’soily hair shampoo bar. No matter how long you use it, virgin olive oil and activated charcoal will never go bad.

6. No hidden effects

Companies don’t want to admit they use retinyl palmitate, or diethanolamine, or polyethylene glycols. So, when you use synthetic hair products you never really know what you’re washing your hair with.

When companies have nothing to hide, you always know exactly how your shampoo is made. Green Tailor uses the best natural locally sourced raw materials for itsshampoo bars, and it admits to that with pride.

7. Understandable ingredients

We’ve been using a lot of tricky words. It can get harder. All those harmful chemicals have acronyms, synonyms, and by-products that make them even harder to identify. Natural hair products, on the other hand, are quite easy to pin down:cocoa butter is cocoa butter; activated charcoal isactivated charcoal, and grape seed extract is grape seed extract.