Reduce Your Plastic Waste With These 7 Sustainable & Refillable Soaps
In an effort to make products that are easier to ship and gentler on the earth, many household companies are now experimenting with refill options.
These allow you to buy one reusable bottle for your soap and refill it as needed—saving on plastic packaging waste. Here are a few refillable hand soap, dish soap, and cleaning products that will leave your home (and conscience) squeaky clean.
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1. Brandless glass cleaner
Brandless is all about lowering the price point of healthy household staples to make them more accessible.
In 2018, the e-commerce platform launched an eco-conscious refill program for its line of cleaners. Now, for a few bucks you can order a pod full of concentrate that activates when combined with water.
You can buy these one at a time or sign up for a subscription service that delivers weekly, monthly, or three times a year depending on your cleaning habits.
Brandless Glass Cleaner Refills, Cucumber Mint 2-pack ($6)
2. method hand soap
Each of method's hand soap refill tubs holds enough soap to fill three full-sized bottles.
The company is known for its sustainable factory and clean ingredient lists, so you can feel good about stocking up on its products for a while.
method Foaming Hand Wash Refill ($8)
3. supernatural cleaning concentrate
With branding that would appeal to any hippie at heart, supernatural is a new soap company that takes a decidedly spiritual approach to cleaning. All of their smell-good cleaners come in concentrate form and are packaged in glass. You can buy refills in a pack of four or piecemeal.
supernatural Concentrates Refill Set ($40)
4. cleancult hand soap
On the hunt for the ultimate earth-friendly refill packaging, green cleaning company Cleancult landed on a creative choice: the humble milk carton. It's a smart solution that's easy to ship and recycle in most areas.
cleancult Liquid Hand Soap Refill ($12)
5. Common Good dish soap
Common Good's founder Sacha Dunn envisions a world where every supermarket has stations you can visit to refill your soap whenever it's running low. And she's getting there!
You can now find bulk bins filled with her cult plant-based cleaners and soaps in hundreds of shops worldwide. Find out if there's one near you here.
Common Good Dish Soap ($9)
6. Blueland multi-surface cleaners
This brand EPA Safer Choice certified cleaners comes in simple, recyclable packaging. Blueland's refills come in no-mess tablet form; each one is wrapped in paper and costs $2 or less.
Started by a mom on a mission to cut back on plastic use at home, the company now applies its plastic-free philosophy to laundry and dish detergents, too.
Blueland Multi-Surface Refill Packs ($8/ 3-pack)
7. Soapply hand soap
Soapply hand soap has an incredibly clean ingredient list, and proceeds from every purchase go toward water sanitation programs in Africa. Bonus: the company now offers a refill option in its signature recycled glass bottle.
Soapply Refill Hand Wash ($39)
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Emma Loewe is the Sustainability and Health Director at mindbodygreen and the author of Return to Nature: The New Science of How Natural Landscapes Restore Us. She is also the co-author of The Spirit Almanac: A Modern Guide To Ancient Self Care, which she wrote alongside Lindsay Kellner.
Emma received her B.A. in Environmental Science & Policy with a specialty in environmental communications from Duke University. In addition to penning over 1,000 mbg articles on topics from the water crisis in California to the rise of urban beekeeping, her work has appeared on Grist, Bloomberg News, Bustle, and Forbes. She's spoken about the intersection of self-care and sustainability on podcasts and live events alongside environmental thought leaders like Marci Zaroff, Gay Browne, and Summer Rayne Oakes.