Here’s a cautionary tale about hand creams. How they are not all equal. Some may smell amazing, some may be great value for money but when you look into it are they great value? Are they great for your skin? Read on to find out…

My glycerine & lavender intensive hand cream is £19.25 for 100g. That’s quite a lot. Not as much as some but more than a lot of other hand creams on the market.

You can buy hand creams for under a fiver in supermarkets. You can get them for £1 in pound shops. And, of course, you can buy them for various different amounts from all cosmetics suppliers.

How your hand cream works

Your shop bought hand cream absorbs quickly into your hands thanks to its base of tap water and alcohol and, if you’re lucky, it might also contains something to do with ‘tibetan moringa, yak spit and papaya seed powder oil extract’ that you don’t recognise but it sounds like it might work, so you buy it.

Your hands don’t feel sticky after using it so it’s absorbed fully into your skin right? But later on, when you wash your hands they feel slimy as the water hits them and you keep rubbing to stop the slimy feeling. What you’ve actually felt is your hand cream just washing away because it’s just been sitting on your skin. If feels like it’s absorbed but it’s just alcohol evaporating off your skin. This, in turn, dries the skin and makes it feel like the cream has gone. The alcohol evaporates in a similar way to when you apply hand sanitiser.

Now that your hand cream has been washed away and you’ve dried your hands you need to apply some more hand cream to replace the stuff you washed off.

That happens every time you wash your hands and soon your skin feels drier and drier after every wash, so you need to use more of your hand cream. After a week or so your handcream is all used up, so you put the tube in the recycling and buy another one.

Let’s do the maths:

Let’s say your hand cream is a budget one priced at £2.50. If you get one every other week that adds up to £65 a year and 26 plastic bottles gone to be recycled or to landfill.

I love Issey Miyakes Eau D’Issey perfume and I got some last Christmas along with a hand and body lotion that came in the set. The hand cream smelled divine but even that just washed away whether I applied it 1 or 2 hours before or even the next morning if I used it at night. Afterwards my skin felt dry and scratchy. I didn’t use it regularly but it was gone in about a month. The cost of that for 100g is £13.00. So one of those every month would be £157.00 a year!

Not all hand creams are equal!

I’ve just finished using a tin of my glycerine & lavender intensive hand cream.

It lasted me 5 months!

Even applying it every night without fail and usually applying a bit too much and rubbing it into my elbows and knees aswell it lasted 5 months.

That’s 5 months of using a 100% natural, organic, vegan, alcohol free, paraben free, tap water free, cruelty free product from one tin! My skin was moisturised and fed, the skin on my hands was being nourished while I slept.  

How does glycerine & lavender hand cream feel?

When I washed my hands the next morning there was no slimy residue of a malabsorbed hand cream.  My hands just felt nourished and protected like there was an invisible barrier to stop the water from damaging and drying my skin. My hand cream had absorbed fully into my skin, sinking right into the epidermis of the skin (which is the bit that needs moisturising the most).

To use this hand cream every night at £19.25 a tin uses 2 and a bit tins and works out at £46.20 for a whole years nourishment for your hands.

2 and a bit aluminium tins which are both reusable and infinitely recyclable.

Did you know

Aluminium is the worlds most abundant metal. It’s also the most recyclable of all materials. When aluminum is recycled, nearly all of the metal can be reused without creating any waste. According to the aluminium association recycling a single aluminum can saves enough energy to power an MP3 player while listening to entire album of songs.

Because it is so easily recyclable, nearly 75 percent of all aluminum ever produced is still in use today.

That’s why we use aluminium tins for all our hand, foot and body products.

The moral of this cautionary tale?

Never confuse cheap with good value for money!

And never assume that an expensive luxury perfumed product is made from superior ingredients.

To get your hands (see what I did there) on your own tin of gorgeous Glycerine & Lavender Intensive Hand Cream just click this link.

Not sure it will be right for your skin? Why not order a trial size tin for £5.95 – which will last you about 6 weeks. They’re great for holidays or handbags or your desk drawer.

Note: You might want to use it twice a day. This will, of course mean that a tin will last 2.5 months not 5 but it’s still way better for your skin, better value and better for the planet than using a water/alcohol based plastic pot of cream that washes off in a slimy goop.

Here endeth the lesson!

Lots of love
Sue xxx