4 Dirty Little Secrets About Liquid Soap
When it comes to handwashing, is liquid soap washed up?
As the old saying goes, “If it ain’t broke, why fix it?” So it might be said about hand soap.
In its bar form, soap has existed literally thousands of years. Then, in the late 1970s, entrepreneur Robert Taylor introduced Softsoap — liquid soap in a bottle with a pump. It was Taylor’s answer to messy soap dishes which he viewed as a problem to be solved. People fell in love with it. Taylor’s novel invention lured almost 100 competitors into the burgeoning liquid soap market which quickly grew to a $120 million industry.
Well, as can happen, the more familiar we become with something, the more we learn about it - and hence the other old adage about familiarity and contempt.
In the case of liquid hand soap, we’ve learned some disheartening things.
Secret #1 — The Packaging: The amount of plastic bottles used to dispense liquid soap can circle the earth at least twice (probably a lot more by now!)
Let’s go for the low hanging fruit first. When it comes to packaging, bar soap wins, hands down.
There are only a few viable options for transporting and dispensing liquid soap, the most prevalent being in a plastic bottle, and, as most people are learning, plastic is forever. It’s neither biodegradable nor compostable.
It’s true that a plastic soap bottle can be recycled; however keep in mind less than 10% of what goes in the recycle bin gets recycled. Also, the pump may or may not be recyclable. Like so many other plastic items, it depends.
About a decade ago, one writer heralded the concerns of plastic soap dispensers and speculated an estimated 577 million of them entered the environment in 2011 - enough plastic to circle the globe 1.8 times. While the math includes a lot of “guesstimating” (here’s the link if you want to check out the calculations for yourself), I feel the point is a good one.
Liquid soap brought a lot of plastic into the world.
Bar soap, on the other hand, can be packed in cardboard boxes, paper wrappings or even sold in bulk with no packaging at all.
Secret #2 — The Production: The cost to produce liquid soap may be 10 x that of bar soap
When it comes to our purchases, the price we pay at the store is only a fraction of the true cost of the product — we don’t consider the cost of each phase of the product over its entire lifecycle.
If we start to do this, look at the various phases of consumer products—from materials gathering to manufacturing to consumption to waste capture—we get a far more accurate idea of their true price. When we tally up the environmental-impact and any legacy issues we’re saddling the earth and future generations with, we begin to understand just how much we actually pay for something.
Interestingly, when we compare bar and liquid soap at the macro level, the overall consensus is bar soap is eco-friendlier, but the analysis is not as black and white as one might think.
Bar soap can leave a significant carbon footprint when you consider all the farming required to produce the natural ingredients often used to make the soap. If palm oil happens to be one of the bar soap’s ingredients, you have an even bigger kettle of fish to deal with due to the deforestation spurred on by its production.
Regardless, according to several reports, liquid soap has a significantly greater carbon footprint. The exact amount varies, but by some counts, it is 10 times that of bar soap. Key factors include the processing impact of synthetic ingredients found in liquid soap; the environmental impact associated with plastic containers; the higher transportation costs due to weight differences between the bar and liquid versions; and liquid soap reportedly requires 30% more water than bar soap.
According to Conservation (Summer 2013 edition), “From cradle to gate, liquid soaps require five times more energy for raw material production and nearly 20 times more energy for packaging production than bar soaps do.”
Secret #3 — The Ingredients: Liquid soap can contain things like petroleum-based additives, sodium cyanide and formaldehyde
It appears soap, like velcro and penicillin, was stumbled upon by accident. Historians speculate some 4,500 years ago a garment factory worker created a crude soap by combining wet ash and lanolin from sheep wool.
All these years later, the primary ingredients for bar soap still remain the same. For those of us who barely squeaked through chemistry or managed to avoid the hellish subject altogether, the formula for bar soap is:
Water + Oils (plant or animal) + Pure Lye (aka sodium hydroxide) = Soap
The process of blending these simple ingredients is called saponification.
Though the base for making bar soap is basically unchanged, manufacturers can and do add ingredients — chemicals to enhance the lather, add scent or color, etc.
I think it’s fair to say most of us live in a chemistry lab - our homes contain a bevy of chemically laden items — from the dish soap under our sinks to the vegetable spread in the refrigerator to the shampoo in our bathrooms and the wine on the dinner table.
It’s okay. We shouldn’t automatically equate synthetic compounds, (i.e., substances that are man-made by synthesis, rather than produced by nature) with bad news. That said, we need to stay vigilant. We’ve all heard of those instances when something we thought was safe may not be (e.g. the controversial parabens). And we need to monitor what goes down our drains—watch for those chemicals that can’t be filtered out by water treatment plants and end up causing aquatic toxicity.
While both liquid and bar soap manufacturers add assorted chemical ingredients to their products to enhance their appeal and lengthen shelf life, it seems bar soap offers a product with fewer additives.
Secret # 4 — Safety: Washing with bar soap does not spread germs
It’s easy to understand why people might think a squirt of liquid soap dispensed from a bottle would be more sanitary than grabbing a bar of soap that’s been handled by god-only-knows how many people.
It sounds right, but it’s wrong.
Several studies have substantiated the fact that germs are not transmitted via bar soap.
The myth was busted in 1965 when a group of scientists contaminated their hands with millions of disease-causing bacteria including E. coli and staph. They concluded, “The level of bacteria that may occur on bar soap, even under extreme usage conditions (heavy usage, poorly designed non-drainable soap dishes, etc.) does not constitute a health hazard.”
Another study published in 1988 stated “These findings, along with other published reports, show that little hazard exists in routine handwashing with previously used soap bars...”
While we’re on the topic of soap myths …
There are two other popular misconceptions about soap that should be corrected:
- Antibacterial soap is a superior germ fighter
- Foaming liquid soap is a great idea
Based on the results of a 2013 study, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration determined there was insufficient science to back up manufacturer claims that over-the-counter antibacterial soaps prevent illness more effectively than washing with plain soap and water.
Some experts believe our attempts to eliminate all bacteria can actually be detrimental to our health. Exposure to bacteria at a young age is vital for a properly functioning immune system as an adult.
Then there’s foaming hand soap which is touted as nourishing, luxuriant and even fun. The problem is it’s during the vigorous rubbing of our hands to create foam that much of the actual cleaning occurs.
Details of a study comparing foaming and non-foaming soaps was published in the American Journal of Infection Control. It showed a slight drop in bacteria when using foam soap, but a statistically significant drop when using soap that required someone lather up themselves.
According to the study’s authors, “[U]se of foam soaps for handwashing may give a false sense of hand decontamination and potentially lead to the spread of resistant bacteria.”
In Summary and Next Steps
Soap is magical.
Regardless of whether you use liquid soap or a bar, the trick to effective handwashing is to vigorously rub your hands together to suds up, and continuing to do so for 20 seconds — the estimated time it takes you to sing the “Happy Birthday” song twice.
If you care about more than just clean hands, then you’ll want to look at the bigger picture. Look at not only the efficacy of the soap you use, but its environmental impact. Buy from companies that are addressing issues like plastics pollution and aquatic toxicity.
For example, the Dove soap division of Unilever partnered with Ellen MacArthur Foundation to participate in the New Plastic Economy, announcing their intension to reduce the use of virgin plastic in packaging of its beauty bar soaps.
There’s no question, environmentally-conscious consumers are starting to drive manufacturers’ decisions. Why not make eco-friendliness a standard product feature?
If you’re a liquid soap user, perhaps you’ll reconsider your choices:
- Switch to bar soap where you can, if not everywhere in your home
- If you continue using liquid soap, buy bulk and refill your plastic dispenser or consider buying a glass or stainless steel soap dispenser
- Remember, bar soap doesn’t transfer germs, so don’t worry
- Foaming liquid soap defeats the purpose of handwashing, so just don’t go there
We can’t fix everything that’s wrong with the world all at once, but we can made progress taking one step at a time. And, while bar soap isn’t perfect on its own, there’s no question it is far more friendly to our planet.
What step will you take today?
