Clean 18: Six Great Reasons To Switch To Soap

Yep, we’re still at it! Still on course, determined to reduce our plastic use here at Moregeous Mansions and nailing January. We’ve switched to glass bottle milk delivery, used all our own bags all month and planned meals to avoid those early evening supermarket hauls of excess packaging. I’ve also been a bit stricter on the shower front and, sorry to be personal, but let’s talk about washing our bits.

Do you, like us, find yourself constantly buying those ‘bargain’ £1 shower gel bottles? You know the ones: Lime, Mint & Coconut and always on offer. Always on offer and always getting lobbed into landfill. These might have filled my shower cubicle with minty freshness but they also filled me with guilty guiltiness. So last year we made the decision to switch (mostly) to solid soap. Occasional birthday or Christmas shower gel treats appear and we recycle the plastic bottles but it’s mostly soapy suds wot lather our bits.
I tried Dove (urgh, goes so soggy) and Imperial Leather (smells like your grandad), but the best of the bunch in the supermarket remained that old favourite Pears. Keeps it’s shape, lasts forever and smells like my childhood, however I’m utterly conflicted as it absolutely sucks on the ethical front. This is an infogram on the ethical comparison site The Good Shopping Guide featuring the best and the worst of the soap world, and it’s quite an eye opener. Pears also uses Palm Oil which is a big no-no, big fan of Orangutans here. Please Pears, sort yourselves out so I can start using your bars again!

Luckily, there are also lots of ‘good’ soaps out there to choose from, especially from the green list on the left. My favourite has to be Lush and I’ve been buying from them ever since they first started trading from a little shop in Poole in Dorset in the mid 90’s. They used to post out a newspaper containing all the products and then customers would ring up to place an order to be delivered. I know some of you youngsters might find that hard to fathom, not looking at a screen to order something. Life before the internet eh.

For those special treat showers, they also do bottle gels which ethically tick all the boxes and the plastic can be returned to your local Lush store when repurchasing, cool huh? They all smell pretty good but, in my humble smelling opinion, Snow Fairy wipes the floor (and your other bits) with the rest. It’s like bubble gum heaven in a bottle and if you don’t like it, I swear there’s something seriously wrong with you.

For me, these aren’t for use every day, but in conjunction with a soap bar. The soaps smell good enough for that not to be too much of a traumatic loss anyhow.
What do you reckon then? Prepared to think about it?

Let me try to convince you to switch to (mostly) solid soap bars:

1. LESS PLASTIC Liquid Soap is always sold in plastic bottles which let’s face it mostly go to landfill, and even if they’re recycled, zillions of gallons of water & energy is required to do so.
2. LESS MONEY You use waaaaay more liquid soap per shower than solid soap, meaning you also save lots of pennies whilst helping save the planet.
3. LESS WATER Liquid soaps contain lots of water, meaning you’re paying for, um, water, not soap. Silly you.
4. LESS CHEMICALS Many cold pressed soaps use rapeseed, coconut or sunflower oil, or cocoa butter, instead of the much more aggressive and unacceptable palm oil.
5. NO TRICLOSAN Many liquid soaps contain this anti-bacterial chemical, currently under investigation in the US by the FDA. Is is useful at all, or could it be harmful, increasing antibiotic resistance? Either way, isn’t soap anti-bacterial by it’s very nature?
6. STORE SOAP WELL Ignore those naysayers who moan about soggy soap, it’s highly likely the bars are just left sitting in water. We all go a bit prune like if left in water, so don’t do it to your soap 😉

Go on, give it a go and ditch the endless gel bottles. Cheap to buy but very costly to our planet x