Move your body wash and conditioner to bars
Solid body and conditioner bars do the same job as the bottles they replace — minus the plastic, the shipped-in water, and the slippery clutter round the bath.
Most shower gel and conditioner is somewhere north of three-quarters water, sold to you in a plastic bottle that took energy and oil to make and will outlive you in landfill. Solid bars strip the water back out: you’re buying the actual cleansing or conditioning ingredients in concentrated form, and adding the water yourself, free, from your own shower.
Because they’re concentrated, bars tend to go a surprisingly long way — a single body bar frequently sees off two or three bottles of gel, and a conditioner bar can last for dozens of washes. Over a year that’s a small stack of bottles, caps and pumps that simply never enter your home, plus less weight shipped around the country, since nobody’s freighting water dressed up as product.
The nuance worth being honest about is hair. Body bars suit almost everyone, but conditioner bars vary more — they’re brilliant on fine-to-normal hair and can feel underwhelming on very thick or coily hair until you find the right formulation. Skin’s the same: some bars are drying, some lovely, so swap one product at a time rather than overhauling the whole shelf in one go. And the make-or-break detail is drainage. A bar left sitting in water turns to mush and gets blamed for “not lasting”, when really it just needed a dish that lets it dry out between showers.
How to do it
- When your current body wash or conditioner runs out, replace it with a solid bar rather than another bottle — try one at a time so you can find a brand your skin and hair like.
- For a body bar, wet it and rub straight onto skin or a flannel; for a conditioner bar, stroke it down the lengths of wet hair, then comb through and rinse.
- Give each bar somewhere to dry between uses — a draining soap dish or a small wooden rack, not a puddle on the tub edge.
- Keep bars away from the direct splash of the shower stream so they don't slowly dissolve when no one's using them.
- Let a bar fully dry out if you're travelling, then pop it in a tin or beeswax wrap instead of a leak-prone bottle.
- Use slivers down to the last bit — press a tired stub onto a fresh bar to fuse them, or pop offcuts in a mesh wash pouch.
Pro tips & pitfalls
- Conditioner bars suit fine-to-normal hair best; very thick or curly hair may want a richer liquid or a bar made specifically for it. Give one a fortnight before judging.
- Avoid the classic mistake of leaving a bar in the splash zone — that's what makes people think bars 'don't last'. Good drainage is the whole game.
What it's good for
Good for the planet
- Beats plastic Each bar replaces a plastic bottle outright; a small body bar often outlasts two or three shower-gel bottles.
- Cuts waste No pump, cap or shrink-wrap, and the cardboard wrap most bars come in is recyclable or compostable.
Find your next hack
Browse more bathroom hacks, or jump to another part of your life.
More bathroom hacks All categories