The bathroom is one of the worst offenders for plastic waste in the average UK home. Shower gel bottles, shampoo bottles, pump dispensers - most of it ends up in the recycling if you're lucky, and landfill if you're not. A plastic-free soap bar is one of the simplest swaps you can make, and it's the one that tends to have the biggest visible impact on your bathroom bin.
What does "plastic-free soap" actually mean?
Not every bar sold as "soap" is genuinely plastic-free. Plenty of supermarket bars are wrapped in a thin plastic film, sit in a plastic tray inside a cardboard box, or are made using synthetic detergents (technically "syndet bars") rather than traditional soap. Genuine plastic-free soap means the bar itself, and everything around it, contains no plastic at all - just the soap, wrapped in paper or left bare, sitting in a cardboard box or nothing at all.
Our Naked & Unwrapped Bars take this a step further by doing away with packaging altogether. No paper wrapper, no plastic film, no box - just the bar itself, exactly as it comes out of the mould.
Why swap bottled shower gel for a bar?
A single 100g bar of goat milk soap typically outlasts a standard bottle of shower gel, and it does so without a bottle to dispose of at all. Multiply that across a household and the plastic saved over a year adds up quickly. There's also the manufacturing side: liquid soaps and shower gels are mostly water, which means more product has to be made, bottled and shipped to deliver the same amount of actual cleanser you'd get from a solid bar a fraction of the size.
Won't a plastic-free bar dry out my skin?
This is the most common worry, and it's a fair one - some bar soaps genuinely are harsh. Old-fashioned soap-making stripped the glycerin out during processing and sold it separately, leaving behind a bar that could feel drying. Our soaps are made differently: each bar is handmade with raw goat milk, natural oils and all of its own glycerin left in, so it moisturises as it cleans rather than fighting against your skin. You get the plastic-free bathroom without the tight, dry feeling people associate with "old soap".
Making the rest of your bathroom plastic-free
Once you've swapped your shower gel for a bar, the same logic extends to the rest of your routine. Our shampoo bars replace bottled shampoo in exactly the same way, and a solid lip balm in a metal tin can replace a plastic squeeze tube. Together, they're an easy way to cut a genuine amount of plastic out of a single bathroom shelf.
Keep your bar dry, and it will last longer
A plastic-free bar left sitting in a puddle of water will turn to mush far faster than one that's allowed to drain between uses, which is really the only downside compared to a sealed bottle. A wooden or ladder-style soap dish solves this instantly. Our Ladder Soap Rack is made from sustainable Hemu wood and lifts the bar clear of standing water, so nothing about going plastic-free has to mean your soap disappearing twice as fast. Our guide on how to make goat milk soap last longer covers a few more tricks for getting the most out of every bar.
A small change with a real effect
You don't need to overhaul your entire bathroom in one go. Start with the bottle you empty most often, usually shower gel or shampoo, and replace it with a plastic-free bar. Browse our Naked & Unwrapped Bars or the full range of handmade goat milk soap to find a scent you'll actually look forward to using.
