Trades For Good Wants to Make Hand Soap More Sustainable

We always look for brands striving for sustainable practices, so it was exciting to see Stay Plastic Free turn us on to a new project, Trades For Good, with the goal of changing the way we look at bathroom products. Trades For Good is currently raising money on Kickstarter to launch an organic hand soap which is housed in an aluminum can. It’s a simple concept, but one that could have a widespread effect: bathroom plastics are among the least recycled plastic products, most of which will end up in increasingly dire landfills. Less than 20% of bathroom plastics are recycled, and it made us think of our own use—it’s as much of a single-use plastic as water bottles, but we usually don’t think of it that way since the products can last for months.

Aluminum cans on the other hand, as Trades For Good points out, are recycled 70% of the time, and can be recycled infinitely. On top of that, they prove to be a perfect container for soaps, without the need for unnatural preservatives. Trades For Good is able to use the ingredients of organic coconut water, sea kelp, and sunflower oil as a skin-friendly base, in three distinct scents: Ryukyu, with peppermint, patchouli, and rosemary, Tofino with cedar wood, basil, and lavender, and Calabria with cardamom, clary sage, and sweet orange. Each can has a simple design, and comes with a plastic cap meant to be reused while the aluminum cans are recycled and replaced.

Trades For Goods’ Kickstarter page is live and nearing its funding goal, with 22 more days to go. It’s the kind of business that we encourage because it can create the kind of ripple effect we need to see in consumer goods. Plastics in the bathroom have gone overlooked for a too long, but brands like Trades For Goods are ready to change that.