Earth Notes: On Green Hair Ties: Review
Updated 2024-01-25.Product: Wild & Stone biodegradable hair ties
- Brand: Wild & Stone
- Colour: multicolour
- Weight: 30g
- Height: 13.1cm
- Width: 1.1cm
- Depth: 8.2cm
- SKU: B08PPTY25S
- MPN: WS6-HAIR-TIES-CLR
- InStock
- GBP6.95 valid at/until:
Review summary
- Wild & Stone biodegradable hair ties
Does the hair tie job well.
Similar in use, eg three twists for my ponytail, to the hair ties that I used previously.
Simple pleasing band design.
Have not evaluated biodegradability yet, but carrier is simple recyclable cardboard.
As of 2023-02-26 buying another set as old ones fairly intensively used starting to get tired and one had stretched enough that it fell off my wrist!
- Pros:
- biodegradable, no plastic
- pleasing design and colours
- can 'store' on wrist as bracelet
- Cons:
- colours a little less bright than expected
- join piece quite visible
- Rating: 4/5
- Published:
Product: Reuserly biodegradable hair ties
- Brand: Reuserly
- Colour: natural
- Weight: 30g
- Height: 15.7cm
- Width: 1.5cm
- Depth: 11cm
- SKU: B09PF9T45S
- MPN: AB-234
- InStock
- GBP6.99 valid at/until:
Review summary
- Reuserly biodegradable hair ties
Does the hair tie job well.
Noticeably smaller/tighter than other hair ties that I have used up until now.
Simple uniform design with no join.
Have not evaluated biodegradability yet, but carrier is simple recyclable cardboard.
- Pros:
- biodegradable, no plastic
- simple design with no join/seam
- large variety of colour variations available
- requires only two twists rather than three
- Cons:
- too tight to 'store' on wrist as bracelet
- Rating: 4/5
- Published:
Somewhere , after a poor visit to a barbers in a lockdown lull, I decided to let my hair and beard just grow, to see what happened.
My head hair has grown about the typical 6 inches / 15cm per year, and the beard about half that overall.
A few months in I made a furtive visit to the local pharmacy to buy something to keep my hair in order. I did not even know what such a bad-hair prophylactic was called. Luckily my new hobby cost ~£2 for ~20 "hair bands", such is the benefit of the product category being targeted to girls' pocket money budgets. I still have not used even half of them two years later, but those that I have degrade by the elastic stretching, and that results in some mixture of metal and synthetics going to waste. I have put them in recycling, but I suspect that landfill or incineration is their destiny.
I think that "hair ties" is what the things I use should be called, but another furtive visit, this time to Amazon, netted me a mixture of biodegradable "hair ties" and some items called "hair bands" (plastic, metal, elasticated fabric) such as Premiership footballers might be seen sporting. Those may be the subject of a separate review.
See the summary reviews above. There will be updates when I have used the ties longer, and if I can make them biodegrade (or not) in our compost heap!
2022-10-29: my daughter (16) likes both styles though prefers the Reuserly with the lack of visible join.
2022-11-02: I noticed in Boots a pack of 10 "pony bands" for £1 claiming to be "metal free" but no strong 'eco' claims.
2023-02-42: the last untouched (blue) Wild & Stone tie came off the card to take to FOSDEM, though did not actually see any action. The green tie, which I have used the most, is quite stretched but still working fine, as are all the rest. They all live in a pile on my desk or one or two on my wrist. Though I have now updated profile pics to full 'big hair', so they may get a little less use.
Verdict: the hair ties work as expected, and I am happy with them. They are significantly more expensive than my initial furtive purchase, and may push my hair-care costs up by several £s per year, shock horror!
2024-01-23: green band died
One of the old green bands died on my desk ie lost all its stretch. I broke it open by pulling hard so that it cannot become a noose for wildlife, and it is on the way to my compost bin (nestling in shredded paper for now)...