Soap Myths Debunked

Bar soap is considered to be more drying as typically it does not have as many moisturisers in the soap as liquid soap does.  FALSE!

Solid soap contains glycerine which is usually taken out of liquid soap to make it lather more, this glycerine is a natural moisturiser, therefore solid soaps are usually more moisturising than liquid soaps/hand washes.

Part-used bar soap can get slimy and messy and whilst this doesn’t pose a threat to your health it appears unsightly by the sink and is considered to lead to a poor user experience. TRUE!

Bar soaps has germs on the surface from previous users and is therefore not a hygienic choice.  FALSE!

Pathogens can live on bar soap, but in studies carried out these pathogens do not get passed from person to person, however, some people are uncomfortable with sharing a bar of soap with other people especially in a public space like a restaurant or shop.

Liquid and solid soaps are the same thing in different formats. FALSE!

There is a chemical, as well as aesthetic, difference between liquid soap and soap bars. Soap is made from a combination of fat/oil, water, and an alkali (traditionally lye). Liquid soap, on the other hand, is usually a synthetic detergent, made from chemical compounds rather than fats and oils.  There is, therefore, much debate about whether we should be using so much chemical-filled liquid soap at all. This is especially true with antibacterial liquid soap. You may have noticed that the adverts advertising hand wash which ‘kills up to 99.9% of bacteria’ have slowly disappeared in the last couple of years. That’s because scientists started speaking out about these antibacterial soaps, and how they’re contributing to antibiotic resistant bacteria. There has also been no research which has found that antibacterial soap is more effective at cleaning than ordinary soap.

Liquid soap has been around forever.  FALSE!

Liquid soap is a common sight today, but it only became an option fairly recently. It was first patented in 1865 by William Sheppard, but for the following century was used almost exclusively for industrial purposes. It wasn’t until the 1980s when it was first mass-produced and became used domestically. To convince homeowners to buy liquid soap instead of soap bars, it had to be easy to use, and so, the pump dispenser was born.  Solid soap bars, made from fats and oils, have been around for much longer. Evidence has been found of a soap-like substance as far back as 2800 BC. We also know that the ancient civilisations of Babylonians, Mesopotamians, Egyptians, ancient Greeks, and Romans all made soap, by combining fats and oils with salt and water.

I’m not doing any harm using liquid soap/hand wash.  FALSE!

When you start evaluating your consumer decisions in terms of how environmentally friendly they are, it soon gets pretty frustrating. Generally speaking there’s rarely a right answer. So much depends on the specific product you’re purchasing: where it was made, how it was transported, how it was packaged, and so it’s never as straightforward as you think. When it comes to soap, though, it seems like the situation is more black and white.

Let’s start with packaging. Swapping to solid soap bars is often on lists of things you should do to reduce your plastic waste, and for good reason. You can usually buy soap bars loose or in recyclable cardboard packets – but do avoid certain soap bars, which are plastic wrapped inside their cardboard box. Liquid soap, on the other hand, will always come in a plastic bottle.

Those plastic bottles of liquid soap are also much heavier than a soap bar, due to the increased water content. That means they’re also more difficult to move around, and use more energy in transportation. It also takes more energy to produce in the first place — using up to five times more energy to produce liquid soap than a solid soap bar.

The story continues once you’ve actually got the soap into your own bathroom. Studies have shown that we use liquid soap much more quickly than solid soap bars. That might be because we feel like more soap equals more cleaning power, or it could be because manufacturers develop overly generous pump dispensers to make us buy more regularly. Either way, on average we use six times more liquid soap than solid soap on a per wash basis. Researchers have also shown that we use more water when washing our hands with liquid soap, than solid soap bars — around 30% more.