The black hair conditioner on the left is derived from the trees on the right
Fengyang Wang/Stockholm University
This sustainable, wood -based hair conditioner may be pitched black and smells like peat, but its creators claim it may be the future of hair care after testing suggests it can work as well as commercial products.
“We use the power of nature,” says Ievgen Pybypchuk at Stockholm University in Sweden. “We combine a high level of science with old traditions … [to] Get something really cool: Simple, useful and effective quite.
Pyrypchuk and his colleagues used lignin, a polymer that is a central component of wood and bark, as the starting point for their bio -based conditioner. When it is extreme from wood, lignin naturally interacts with water While he also trades a surfactant agent, a key component of detergents. It also contains natural antioxidants that help preserve conditioner and provide UV protection, says Pylypchuk. “Lignin acts as a multifunctional platform in this context,” he says. “It protects against UV, it’s mube.”
The researchers combined an equation developed in their laboratory with coconut oil and water to produce the final product. Team member Mika Sipponen, also at Stockholm University, claims that it works almost as well as commercial conditioner. When it was spent on samples of moistened bleached human hair and then it was, it reduced the “pull” as it combed the hair while still moist by 13 percent compared to the commercial product they tested, reducing traits by 20 percent.
A potential disadvantage is that the current formulation of conditioner is “pitched black” and smells like “cooked wood” that looks like peat, says the sippon. It has been discouraged the researchers from considering marketing it. They tested the formula on hair, towels and pork skins, saying it was washing off without leaving stains. Even the smell is quite pleasant, says PybyPchuk. “I personally like it a lot, and most of the people in our laboratory – maybe because they work with lignin – they liked it.”
Pyrypchuk and Sipponen have a patent on the equation and hope their conditioner can become a consumer product that offers people a more sustainable alternative to current products that rely on ingredients derived from Fossil Fuel. They say the next step is to see if there is an eye and skin irritation in front of any attempt at live hair.
US-based cosmetics scientist TREFOR EVANS, Trained at the Textile Research Institute Princeton, New Jersey, has doubts about how well the product would work compared to commercial rivals. “I have been doing this experience for 30 years, and a conference relationship will lower the giant forces by 80 percent, maybe even 90 percent,” he says. The sippon believes that variation in the testing methods and the condition of the hair during analysis could explain why the team found only one 20 per day. A hundred reduction for the commercial conditioner.
The apparatus and unusual odor can also expose consumers, Evans says. “The patent literature is definitely chock-a-block with potential hair conditioner Formlas that never went anywhere,” he says. “And the reason is that you don’t just need effective – for the consumer to buy it, what you really need is also aesthetics.”
So would a black, wood-smell, environmentally friendly conditioner be a hit with consumers? “Sounds like a bit of non-starter,” says Evans.
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