Bar Soap

Have you looked in the average bathtub or shower today? Go on, take a look, how many plastic bottles and containers do you see lining the shelves and edges of our tubs? I counted six in my two person household. Your Mom or Grandmother's (or Great Grandmother, I forget how old I am getting) bathtub probably had just one thing in it, a bar of soap.


Contents of my shower:

1 bottle shampoo
1 bottle conditioner
1 tube special conditioner
1 girl body wash
1 boy body wash
1 container facial scrub

That's a lot of plastic, and depending on how often you shower and how many people in your house, you may go through this much or more in a single month! Not only that, but when we buy liquid soaps, much of what we are moving is water, so we are paying to transport water whereas a bar soap contains only the cleaner itself. A bar of soaps weighs in at 4.25 ounces and ships very compactly with its flat square shape. A awkward bottle of body wash weighs in at 10 ounces, lists water as the first ingredient and does not seem to last as long around my home.

Fear not, while you may not be able to maker your bathtub bottle free, here are a few tips on going Retro-Green and making smart choices.

• Say Goodbye to Bodywash, and Hello to Bar Soap: Remember that little bar of soap, simply wrapped in paper? You can find so many varieties, and if you enjoy using the ever popular body pouf, bar soap actually foams up just as well as bottled body wash, you just need to use a little elbow grease. Many stores sell completely natural varieties, some of my favorites are Bee & Flower brand(shown above, my fave is Sandalwood) and any of the bars from LUSH
  
• If you are brave, you can even trade in your pump hand wash on the sink for a plain old bar of soap. If that isn't for you, try using refillable containers, and be sure to recycle the plastic you do keep.
  
• LUSH offers an amazing product called Solid Shampoos which make it easy to cut down on bottles, one bar lasts up to 40 shampoos!They even offer a cute metal tin to keep the bar in when not in use. They also offer a Solid Conditioner but I cannot vouch for it as I have not tried it yet.
  

I am in the conversion process right now, here is my list again, edited down thanks to my Retro-Green tips :)

From 6 bottles, down to just 1 tube!

Bottles of Shampoo and Conditioner- Replaced by Solid Shampoo bar sold with no wrapping, stored in a reusable metal tin, no more plastic bottles here!

1 girl body wash, 1 boy body wash- replaced with 2 bars of soap, a nice girly one for me, and a manly scented one for my hubby.

1 container facial scrub- still there, waste not want not, and it works until I find a good alternative. Bar soap works, but I don't like the way it makes my face feel afterward.

All said, being green isn't about buying things that say green on them, it's about the choices we make every day. I often feel lately that "green" is more often a marketing ploy than anything else. Some things that claim to be "green" are actually worse for the environment in the long run. While our ancestors certainly did some horrible things to the environment, they had some great ideas too, and certainly consumed much less in the household. I look forward to hearing and learning about more products to reduce, reuse, or re-invent our daily habits.