By Shea Coughlin
Soap and Sustainability: The Unexpected Advantages of Bar Soaps
For as long as I can remember, one of my favorite family activities was Saturday mornings at the farmer’s market. My family would wake up early after a long week to stroll outside on the town green and sample the different fruits, vegetables, pastries, and more from local farmers and artisans. One vendor, in particular, was my favorite, as soon as we got to the market in the mornings, all I wanted to do was get to the tent for Goatboy Soaps. Sampling the different scents of these handmade goat’s milk soap bars and visiting the farm’s namesake goats was one of my favorite parts of the weekend.
At the time, I was completely unaware of what a standout example of a sustainable business Goatboy Soaps is, but later, I learned the many unexpected benefits of buying bar soaps. It can be odd to think that the humble soap bar has so much to teach us about sustainability and eco-friendly living, and yet, choosing them over liquid soap is one of the easiest and most effective ways to reduce your carbon footprint.
Traditional bar soap is actually quite environmentally conscious. The first and most obvious benefit to bar soap is the packaging. Liquid soaps must be packaged in plastic, and they come with a plastic dispenser that is almost impossible to recycle. Whereas bar soap is often packaged in 100% recyclable paper or a much smaller amount of plastic than its liquid counterpart.
Another benefit to using bar soap is the lack of water in the product. Liquid soaps contain water as a filler, pre-activating the surfactant qualities of the soap. However, extra water is heavy and takes up a lot of space. This added water requires more trucks and more fuel for shipping purposes which puts more CO2 into the atmosphere and ultimately means more money out of the customer’s wallet. Bar soaps are more fuel-efficient due to the sheer volume of product that can fit in one shipping container as compared to their liquid counterparts.
However, my personal favorite reason to buy bars instead of liquid soaps is the large and growing variety of hand-crafted, locally made bar soaps. Aside from the empirical fact that locally sourced products have a much smaller carbon footprint, this also allows you as a buyer to support your community. I have two personal friends who make and sell their own bar soaps, and there are many more in my area. These small-scale operations are more personal, almost always higher quality, and made with love.
In recent years, liquid and foaming soaps have become the standard for a number of reasons, the main of which is that they seem cleaner. It can feel intuitive that putting a bar of soap directly on the areas to be washed would leave some undesirable bacteria on its surface. Additionally, liquid antibacterial soaps that “kill 99.9% of germs” can be very enticing, especially during a global pandemic. But study after study shows that there is actually no hygienic benefit to either kind of soap and many environmental benefits to bars.
Some larger personal care brands that strive to reduce their carbon footprint have also realized the benefits of producing soap products in bar form and have run with that concept as far as it will go. Gone are the days of a solitary bar of hand soap sitting on the edge of your sink. Now you can purchase hand soap, shampoo, conditioner, body wash, specialty cleansers, perfumes, lotions, and even dish soap in a solid form.
Swapping out one, some, or all of these liquid products for their solid counterparts is a tangible, easy, and affordable way to reduce your carbon footprint and even put some revenue back into your community. There are now a wonderful variety of solid products on the market, but most of all, I highly recommend heading over to a farmer’s market to see if there are any local soaps being sold. You may be delighted with what you find.
