For years I’ve been singing the praises of bar soap. In blog posts like Our 5 Favourite Personal Care Routine Swaps and Top 10 Easy Changes to Reduce Your Waste, to friends and family and in zero waste Facebook groups. I recognise that there are occasions when a liquid soap is useful though. For household cleaning, for example. I like using bicarb of soda and orange vinegar for cleaning, but sometimes a bit of soap is necessary too. I had been rubbing some soap on my cleaning flannel, but knew a liquid soap would be easier. So I decided to have a go at making some.
I used the recipe from Zero Waste Home by Bea Johnson, which has simply two ingredients: grated soap and water.
The method is almost as simple:
- Take a large stockpot or bucket.
- Add one and a half cups of grated soap (I used aleppo soap) to one (US) gallon of warm water.
- Leave to sit overnight.
- In the morning, blend it with a stick blender and then transfer to a liquid soap dispenser.
- Store the remainder in a large jar or bottle until needed.
I halved the quantities for this first attempt and it is a little bit too watery, so I think maybe I added a little bit too much water. However, you can see from the pictures how much of the cube of soap I’ve used. Making liquid soap really makes a bar of soap go a very long way.
If you have a go, let me know how you get on in the comments below.
Spot of Earth 
[…] just as well without the lather that sodium laureth sulfate (derived from palm oil) creates. I make my own liquid soap from castile soap bars and use it for floors, hand washing, washing up, […]
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[…] Bar soap – This was by far and away one of the first and easiest swaps we made. Bar soap can be bought cheaply and it lasts for ages. It also makes a nice zero waste gift for someone. Our favourites are olive oil soap, which I use on my face, Dettol soap (comes in a cardboard box) for washing hands after nasty chores, and then something a bit more fancy for the bathroom. I’ve also just invested in a big, cube-shaped bar of Aleppo soap. I say invested because I know this is going to last ages and I’m also going to try grating some to make my own liquid soap to use for household cleaning. I’ll be blogging about that later in Zero Waste Week. (Update: You can find my liquid soap blog post here.) […]
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[…] 10. Swap liquid soap for bar soap. For some reason, when my children were little, I bought liquid soap in a plastic container instead of bar soap. I think it was probably a combination of worrying about cleanliness and wanting to encourage them to wash their hands. When I started our zero waste journey, one of the first things I did was swap back to bar soap. I have Dettol soap in the kitchen for washing my hands after nasty jobs and elsewhere in the house a mixture of castille soap and scented soaps. I now have to be strict with myself not to indulge in buying fancy bars of soap! You can read more about liquid soap vs bar soap and how to make your own liquid soap from bar soap here. […]
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