They’re all-natural, plastic-free, gentle and great multi-taskers…what’s not to love about beauty’s almost naked heroes?
(And ideal ‘solid beauty’ hand luggage travel companions for when we can do that, hopefully fairly soon).
There are two things I have rekindled a love for recently, one is lavender, the other is soap bars.
I’m still using some soaps entered into the Beauty Shortlist and Eco Lifestyle Award last month, so I wanted to share a few of this year’s best-loved bars:
KEAR: MASTIC HERBAL SOAP
Greek soap masters KEAR (Kear, not Keap!) have a beautiful soap edit for soap lovers including lemon, sage, chamomile and this one – with mastic from the island of Chios.
Mastic is one of those ancient Mediterranean remedies from nature that does lots of things, from controlling sebum to helping ward off bacterial or fungal infections. I honestly don’t know how to describe the scent of the soap (but it’s not overpowering and I love it).
It’s nice to see it at Wolf & Badger whose beauty edit is very carefully curated – and there are always brands to discover which you may not have heard of till now…
https://www.wolfandbadger.com/uk/mastic-herbal-soap-bar/
UPCIRCLE SOAP BARS
The name says it all, so ‘bravo’ to Upcircle a brand that has been continuously raising awareness about repurposing ingredients in self-care products, something they do well on the soap front.
Click below to buy their award-winning soap bar/s or find about more…
HAOMA’s ECO-FRIENDLY ARTISAN SOAPS (AND MORE THAN SOAP)
Swoon! HAOMA has carved a much-lauded name for itself in a short time, with a combo of clean ingredients, high quality bars and pretty, eye-catching branding.
I think they started with deodorants first, bottled in Violet Miron Glass which speaks volumes about HAOMA’s eco-sensibility and attention to detail. As their website points out:
“One single plastic bottle will remain on the planet in some form for a minimum of 540 years”.
What’s more, HAOMA has many branches, from soaps to organic eau de parfums, a hand sanitiser and their signature natural deodorants (eg containing 10 plant extracts in one deodorant).
Tested, loved and highly recommended, their soaps are so beautifully presented you could give them, just as they are, as gifts ( and let’s face it soap has never been more important than right now with the virus still lurking).
Click the pic to discover HAOMA’s award-winning artisan range:
I don’t think the Beauty Shortlist Awards are particularly easy to win, but HAOMA won six this year. Here’s a snapshot of the Geranium & Palmarosa Soap ingredients:
ECO WARRIOR by The Little Soap Company
I’ll leave the blurb to Emma, who founded her artisan soap company quite a way back – in 2008, just one year before The Beauty Shortlist sprang to life.
She also now sells make-your-own-soap kits too, a fun project for a Saturday or Sunday afternoon at home. Eco Warrior soaps are stocked at loads of supermarkets plus Boots and Lloyds Pharmacy so you can pick one up with your online food shop.
Here’s her story:
“Created by Emma Heathcote-James in 2008, Little Soap Company really is a kitchen table to supermarket shelf story. Her passion was to reduce the amount of unnecessary synthetics people unwittingly rubbed into their skin and her unwavering aim, to make pure soap, accessible to all.
The first Organic soap bar to hit the supermarket shelves, was followed by the first Natural, then the first eco-soap – putting traditional liquids into bar form to eliminate unnecessary plastic bottles and tubes.
Now lining the shelves of all the UK supermarkets with four strong ranges for every skin type, need and budget, we are thrilled to have been awarded B Corp Certification in November 2020. We’ve done the thinking so you can wash not only with the purest soap we believe possible, but also with a conscience.”
https://www.littlesoapcompany.co.uk/shop/eco-warrior-soaps/
I haven’t mentioned the specialist fabric cleaning soap bars and dishwashing soaps that won our awards this year – or the solid skincare bars – but I will in another post.
I think this was the strongest year ever for these almost naked, travel-friendly, low waste/zero waste planet-kind bars, so kudos to these “bar brands” working to keep things clean, simple and planet-positive.