Home Cosmetic Science Talk Formulating Hair vegan shampoo

  • vegan shampoo

    Posted by belassi on September 25, 2015 at 3:30 am

    I’m pretty confident that I can produce a high foaming, great sensorials, sulphate-free, vegan shampoo. This is going to be my next project and I believe I should be able to complete it in about three weeks. Anyone else here making a vegan shampoo?

    Microformulation replied 8 years, 7 months ago 5 Members · 8 Replies
  • 8 Replies
  • thebrain

    Member
    September 26, 2015 at 4:17 pm

    Wouldn’t just about any sulphate-free shampoo qualify as vegan? What exactly makes a “vegan” shampoo different?

  • belassi

    Member
    September 26, 2015 at 5:49 pm

    I am confusing “vegan” with “naturally sourced”. I hadn’t realised that “vegan” also means things such as SLS! 

  • Microformulation

    Member
    September 26, 2015 at 8:48 pm

    Vegan is more marketing and honestly not hard to comply with. It really adds no benefit or significantly impacts the Formulator. There are very few animal derived products that you can’t do without by using alternative materials.

    Plant derived (which would reflect a “vegan” leaning) also can be taken to different levels. Is it directly sourced from the plant material? Is it processed?

    I honestly eschew all the marketing terms because…I am a Scientist not a marketer. If the client so desires “natural” I will educate them on a natural standard and follow those guidelines.

  • thebrain

    Member
    September 28, 2015 at 1:56 pm

    @Belassi: Ah, OK, that makes sense. What standard(s) are you going to follow? I’m definitely working on a sulfate-free formulation, but I haven’t decided if I’m really aiming for “natural” just yet.

  • belassi

    Member
    September 28, 2015 at 3:54 pm

    Naturally sourced. I am pretty sure my surfactant combination is all naturally sourced and not derived from petrochemicals. The only thing that bothers me slightly is the sodium hydroxide. It’s necessary because I’m using a pure carboxylic acid with a pH of 3, as the primary surfactant. The result of course is sodium laureth-6 carboxylate and water, there’s no NaOH left after neutralising.

  • David

    Member
    October 2, 2015 at 9:55 pm

    As Micro cited above - to avoid animal derived ingredients is not really hard for a formulator.

    A standard sulfate shampoo will fulfill that criteria.
    Better choose a natural certification standard or eventually make up one yourself together with the customer.
  • mikethair

    Member
    October 3, 2015 at 8:22 am

    At Indochine Natural we make a liquid soap shampoo……basically saponified vegetable oils…..but we add organic honey which kills it for Vegan. Something similar with  other additives apart from honey will work fine.

    I know the “experts” here will probably run down liquid soap as a shampoo, but that fact is it sells very well…..our customers love it…..and now 85% + of our production is OEM/Private label….so it must be doing something right. OK, we are not selling 100,000’s of bottles/day, but orders of 1,000 bottles/month are not uncommon.

  • Microformulation

    Member
    October 3, 2015 at 5:51 pm

    Actually Liquid Soaps are quite common in “natural” pet markets despite their disadvantages. They are much less common in human mainstream Cosmetic markets.

    Why do you refer to us as “experts” rather than experts? Comes off a bit snarky.

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