Raising the Bar

Plastic free alternatives in the bathroom

So let’s face it. Plastic is everywhere. It is impossible to go through your day without plastics being a part of your life in some way. From your car to your toilet seat, most of the plastic we encounter we don’t give much thought.

Plastic has made so much in our lives easier, no doubt about it, but it is becoming an ever increasing problem. I’m all about finding plastic free alternatives and right now I’m focusing on the bathroom. So let’s start with what I think is the easiest, and least expensive, plastic free change I’ve made.

Remember when liquid soap wasn’t a thing? All we had was bar soap? Maybe you aren’t old enough, but for me that is all we had growing up. So my challenge for Day 3 of the July Plastic Free Challenge, is to change the soap in my bathroom back to bar soap. There are some pretty fantastic handmade options out there or of course you can also still buy bar soap at the grocery store as well.

Not only will making this simple change reduce your plastic use, as most bar soaps have minimal packaging or are even wrapper free, studies have shown that bar soap has a much smaller carbon footprint than liquid soap.

When we focus on the packaging, liquid soap of course comes in a plastic container. While the container itself can usually be recycled, remember though, only 9% of plastics ever are, the pump cannot be.

But the packaging is not the only concern with liquid soaps. Starting with the manufacturing, liquid soaps require more energy to produce and contain a lot of water making them heavier to ship and increasing it’s carbon footprint. Take a look at the ingredient list of your liquid soap and you’ll find a long list of impossible to pronounce ingredients, also most use a petroleum based surfactant.

I was pretty conservative with my pumps (= cheap), but apparently the majority of people are pump happy. We use up to 6 times more product when we use liquid soap compared to bar soap.

Although this was one of the easiest switches to make due to the large variety of pretty smelling alternatives. I’m embarrassed to admit it didn’t occur to me, this was an overlooked area of plastic use I didn’t even think about. One of my students suggested it and I immediately thought “DUH” and on my next trip to the store bought myself a bar of soap.

Have you made the switch?
Let me hear from you!