An easy step towards a zero waste, chemical free home
Switching from bottles of liquid soap and body wash to a solid bar of soap is a great step along the road to reducing your environmental impact. At the very least you are avoiding buying plastic bottles that will most likely sit in a landfill site somewhere for years and years to come.
You can also now get palm oil free soaps, which allow you to entirely avoid palm oil and all its negative environmental and human rights issues.
My absolute favourite soap is from Palm Free Irish Soap (https://palmfreeirishsoap.ie/). Lavender scented, rich and creamy, with no packaging and Irish – tick, tick, tick! However, it is expensive (€3.75/bar) when compared with the mass-produced soaps that you find in the supermarket. They are cheaper because they are made from palm oil and petroleum by products – so it is the environment that pays the price.
Another option is Faith In Nature (https://www.faithinnature.co.uk/), which are slightly cheaper at €2.99/bar (Boots.ie). I’m looking into a way to bulk buy these and will keep you posted! It’s a UK product which unfortunately complicates things!
Finally, in terms of aesthetics alone, I much prefer to see a beautiful bar of soap rather than a sea of garish, plastic bottles!
Top tips – a soap rack (rather than a soap dish) will allow your soap to dry and stop it going “mushy” and when the soap gets down to the last bit, retire it to the shower and pop it in a hemp bag to use as a body scrub. You can get “soap saver bags” (€3ish) in most natural food shops or online.
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