Week #22 First step to zero waste: soap bar

Achieving zero waste lifestyle can be really tricky. When shopping around, you will find that majority of the products are packed in one or multiple layers of plastic.

Or you can go for shopping to specialised stores, where you can buy “naked” products, but this is not accessible to everyone. 

In order not to get discouraged and get frustrated by how we can not do it, I would recommend starting one step at the time. Choose one product that you know can come without any packaging. 

For example, start using bar soap instead of liquid soap, as it tends to come with less packaging.

Why a bar of soap? Well, for one, it requires a lot more energy to produce liquid soaps (detergents, technically) — about five times more.

For two, liquid soaps can come with up to 20 times more packaging than a humble bar soap, which is often sold in minimalist cardboard boxes, sleeves, or sometimes just loose and wrapper-free. Liquid soap also contains a lot of water, which means those bulky plastic bottles are heavier and much less efficient to ship — so its carbon footprint from transportation is a lot larger.
And once we finally have the bottles in our bathrooms, we tend to use much more of it: about seven times more per washing session, whether that’s because of overly generous pump dispensers or our own bad habits.(source)

So even with this single step, you can reduce some plastic in your everyday life.