Is your bathing hurting the planet?

[George K]

Bar soap or body wash: Which is best for your skin and the planet?

What’s the most sustainable way to wash your hands or lather up in the shower?

In general, the greenest option is an old-school bar of soap made from plant oil or animal fat and lye, without many extra ingredients. Simple bar soap cuts greenhouse emissions by about a third compared with liquid soap, according to a study from the Institute of Environmental Engineering at the Swiss university ETH Zurich.

“Soap is a natural product, it’s sustainable, and it’s been used for a long time,” said Tony O’Lenick, president of the Society of Cosmetic Chemists, a professional association for the scientists who concoct recipes for beauty products. The downside: “That kind of soap dries skin out,” he added.
That’s why many people have turned to liquid hand soap and body wash, which have seized about half the American soap market since their introduction in the ’70s and ’80s, according to sales data from Mintel, a market research company. Liquid soaps and body wash typically come with extra ingredients to moisturize skin, and many brands advertise the skin care benefits of their products.

“A lot of those new claims have mostly been tacked onto liquid formats, particularly liquid body wash, which has kind of left bar soap behind,” said Joan Li, a senior beauty and personal care analyst at Mintel.

But lately, the soap market has gotten a lot more complicated: Many bars of soap — looking to ditch their reputation as drying — now contain the same artificial, petroleum-based ingredients and moisturizing additives as liquid soaps. And some liquid soap — in a bid to market itself as eco-friendly — is now made from the simple, natural ingredients found in old school bar soap.

If you want to cut through the noise and pick the greenest option, according to O’Lenick, you should think about ingredients, packaging and the differences in how you scrub with bars vs. liquid soap.

Washington Post: Answering the question that no one has asked.

[George K]

ETA:

But whether your soap is bar or liquid, natural or synthetic, it’s not going to be a huge part of your carbon footprint. In the worst case, washing your hands creates 15 grams of carbon emissions, according to the study — the equivalent of charging your phone one time, or driving a car 200 feet. We’re not judging you for the soap that you use.

15 grams of CO2. That's half an ounce.

Now do Al Gore, Taylor Swift...etc.

[LuFins Dad]

In 20 years we will be back to horse drawn carriages and lighting our homes with tallow candles.