Sustainability | Saving plastic by switching to bar soap

Hello all

As I mentioned in a previous post, this is my first article about my journey to become a little bit more sustainable and reducing my waste on my daily life.

In each post I will share the small steps I’m doing to live my life in a more sustainable way. I will share what have worked and what didn’t and also, I will be super happy if you have tips that have worked for you.

I want to make a disclaimer: I’m not perfect, neither I will pretend to leave a plastic free lifestyle or to be the poster child of the eco- green movement. This is just my personal journey to be more conscious on how I’m consuming and the choices I’m making to have less impact in the environment. I’m not an extremist I believe in balance. The idea is to be a little bit better every day, not perfect.

My first action was to switch by shower gel to bar soap. almost entirely. I started to do this early year (around February), and I love it! Although I have not switch entirely, as I use like 2 bottle per year of the Bio derma shower oil gel for my dry skin I can see I have minimize from consuming a bottle of shower gel per month to zero. So if I do the math that goes down to 10 bottles for around 500 -750 ml less per year. And so far we are loving it.

What are the benefits I have seen so far? here are a 4 great ones:

You’ll Use Less Soap

Overall, people tend to use much more liquid soap than bar soap when washing. Bar soap will last longer and help you save money in the long run.

Less the plastic packaging

This was the main reason that I decided to switch to bar soap my body washing. It is difficult to eliminate plastic from other products, but this one is a no brainer.

There are so many fantastic options out there for plastic-free soap that it’s mind-boggling. You can even get shampoo and conditioner bars for your hair (still on my list to try).

Smaller Carbon footprint

Liquid soap contains more water than bar soap, so that combined with the weight of the plastic packaging makes the entire product much heavier. This extra weight makes liquid soap’s carbon footprint larger when it comes to product transportation.

So many options, specially from small brands.

There are so many commercial soaps available at the drugstore so you will have no problem in finding one for your skin type. But also there a large group of small brands that are making excellent bar soaps, with high quality ingredients and conscious packaging, Also check your local stores and you will find a nice variety of offers and great small brands with great stories behind it

My favorites bar soaps (so far) are:

The Singular Olivia: a beautiful Spanish brands that makes one THE best soaps in the world (in my opinion) I wrote a post last year talking about their story and products. Now they just launched a bar shampoo that I’m very eager to try. Their IG is @thesingularolivia.

L’Occitane: they have this huge bar soaps that you can always buy and last a long time and thy are super gentle for your skin. Great quality, great soaps, responsible sourcing.

Formulary 55: This is an American brand that i discovered back in 2013 and their soaps are the bomb dot com. very unique scents, no colors and eco packing. you can check them out in the web page. IG @formulary55.

Nesti Dante: Italian brand with huge bar soaps (250gr) made with natural ingredients and 100% biodegradable.

Dove: on the commercial area, the soap I like the most is Dove as is very soft for my skin, but the downsize the bar are so small that we used it up in less that 2 weeks.

The list can be endless as there are so many great options to try!

My next step is switching my hand soap to bar soaps.

Do you use Bar soaps?

Which one are favorite ones?

Note: This post does not contains affiliate links. This post is not sponsored