Should You Switch To Solid Dish Soap?

If you feel like all you hear about lately is green alternatives to the products you use every day, you're not totally wrong! As climate change impacts more of our daily lives, many folks are looking for small ways to switch up their routines and make better choices for the health of the environment. And one of the top actions people are taking to do so is with their cleaning products — ditching plastic bottles and harsh chemicals are just a few ways. HPCI predicts the green cleaning products market to increase by several billion dollars by the end of 2024. 

One of the newest innovations is solid dish soap — while you may have grown used to a bottle of the liquid blue stuff next to your kitchen sink, solid dish soap may become a new go-to cleaning product. So if you're wondering whether you should make the switch, there are a few factors to consider. 

Liquid dish soap and detergents are becoming less popular for a few reasons. One of which is that they are typically shipped in plastic bottles, which is not an environmentally friendly material. Some of the biggest cleaning supply manufacturers like Dawn have started creating refill bottles that prevent you from having to buy a new bottle, typically forgoing the plastic-heavy spray head, but for many shoppers, eliminating plastic is the main goal. The eco-friendly company Grove Collaborative ships some liquid products in glass bottles or concentrates to reduce packaging waste. However, even with these measures, it is still an enormous tax on the environment to ship products that are mostly water across the country and even over oceans. 

According to ZME Science, liquid soap has a carbon footprint that is 10 times higher than that of solid products. That's due to the production, shipping, and packaging materials. For instance, solid dish soap doesn't require any packaging and can easily be shipped in recycled paper. And because it's activated with water from your tap, there's less material to transport. 

Now a healthy dose of skepticism toward magical products that claim to work as well as the chemical cleaners we all know and rely on is more than reasonable. You're probably not ready to toss out your go-to dish soap just yet, because you're wondering if solid dish soap really can work as well as the liquid blue stuff. But with countless reviews filled with tons of praise for this eco-friendly cleaning product, the answer from the Internet seems to be a resounding yes! 

Mindset Eco reviewed 10 natural solid dish soaps and found them to deliver incredible results on their dishes. Some of the big perks they and other solid dish soap converts love are: a little goes a long way, no wasted product lingering at the bottom of the bottle, and not having to worry about disposing of harsh chemicals and stringent recycling requirements. So if you're looking for a small way to benefit the environment without losing the sparkling clean finish on your dishes, you can make the switch to solid dish soap with confidence.