Papa Wolf and the Quest for a Waste-Free Shave #wasteLESSwednesday

I received the products free for review, but all opinions remain my own. (I went on to purchase more The Copper Hat supplies for my Dad!)

Working as a David Suzuki’s Queen of Green volunteer Green Coach this year, I was inspired to find even more ways to cut down on waste in our home. One spot that needed work was in my husband’s shave routine: disposable razor cartridges and shaving cream in a plastic pump. Welcome to another installment of #wasteLESSwednesday!

My husband’s facial hair is kind of my arch-nemesis, and sometimes his. Shaving is unpleasant for him because he has extremely thick facial hair and he cuts himself frequently. His cartridges get dull fast and need to be replaced often. The day after shaving, his face and neck are always covered in little white heads, meaning he can’t shave again until his face has healed. His face is, by mid-week (he shaves on Sundays) populated by ingrown hairs.

Frankly, he’d rather grow a beard. His employer and I would rather he didn’t! When I was pregnant, he grew a “pregnancy beard” that was so intense that when I was in the hospital giving birth, it honestly looked like my Baby Daddy was a hobo! When he came back to our room after going home to shave (in honor of the birth, of course), I didn’t recognize him and took him for an orderly…

Enter The Copper Hat: helping men get back to basics with “old-fashioned” shaving soap in a dish and a badger brush to fluff up the soap (instead of an aerosol pump), along with reusable razor handles paired with double-edged blades that can be returned for recycling.

The silvertip badger brush was handcrafted by The Copper Hat co-owner, Brad, including the handle which was made by compressing discarded Styrofoam. It’s amazing how the soap froths up and looks just like shaving foam from an aerosol can:

The razor handle and blade are easy to set up:

So how was the shave?

Cub and I hovered around in the bathroom, eagerly observing Papa Wolf’s first shave with his new The Copper Hat equipment. Papa’s first comment was, “It’s smooth, it’s really smooth.” My first observation was that it was quiet: I can hear the sound of the four-blade cartridges dragging across Papa Wolf’s skin when he shaves with his disposable cartridges, but there was no dragging, scraping sound using the double-edged blades.

I have never seen Papa Wolf shave without emerging without at least a couple blood-soaked toilet-paper squares dotting his face. With his double-edged razor… there was no blood!

The next day… his skin was smooth, there were NO WHITE HEADS! Honestly, his skin is normally nasty the day after he shaves, and then his skin spends the rest of the week recovering while ingrown hairs start to pop up.

Bottom Line:

My husband gets a significantly better shave using a double-edged razor and The Copper Hat badger brush and shaving soap. We’re looking at huge savings by only having to replace the double-edged blades, which cost .40 cents a-piece. He will have the razor handle itself for the rest of his life, and the badger brush for years.

We were so happy with our The Copper Hat products, we sent some to my Dad. My Dad had many razor handles, and has always used a brush and soap to shave… but at some point he’d switched over to cartridges. I’ve convinced him to make the switch back to double-edged razor blades and to replace his old brush with something sturdier, more durable and much softer. His brush handle is made of reclaimed white oak.

 

Have you greened your shave?