Plastic Free July: why the bathroom is the easiest room to start

Every July, a quiet challenge that started in a small office in Perth spreads to something like 174 million people across the globe. Plastic Free July began in Western Australia back in 2011, and the idea has stayed refreshingly simple: pick one single-use plastic habit and try to break it for a month. Most people reach straight for the obvious targets, the coffee cups and the supermarket bags. But if you want to find where plastic really piles up in a home, open the bathroom cabinet.

The bathroom is where plastic hides in plain sight

Have a proper look under your sink. The body wash bottle, the shampoo and conditioner, the little tube of hand cream, the face cleanser, the pump-pack of liquid soap by the basin. Almost every one of them is plastic, most of it the kind that never really gets recycled even when we rinse it out and pop it in the yellow bin. A single household can churn through dozens of these bottles a year without ever thinking about it.

The frustrating part is that a lot of what you're buying in those bottles is water. Liquid body wash and bottled shampoo are mostly water with a bit of cleanser and a long ingredient list to keep it all shelf-stable. You pay to ship water around the country in plastic, then you pay again to throw the plastic away. It's a strange arrangement when you stop and think about it.

The swaps that actually stick

The good news is the bathroom is probably the easiest room to make a dent in, because the alternatives have been around far longer than the bottles have. A bar of soap wrapped in paper, or nothing at all, does the job a bottle of body wash does, minus the plastic and minus the water you were paying for. Our Just Tallow Soap 6% is about as pared-back as it gets: grass-fed tallow, a gentle cleanse, no packaging fuss. One bar tends to outlast a bottle of wash too, so it's kinder on the budget as well as the bin.

Hair is the swap people worry about most, and fair enough, because it's the one that feels the most personal. A shampoo bar takes a week or two to settle in while your scalp adjusts, and then most people forget they ever used the bottle. Our Tallow Crown Shampoo Bar lathers up like you'd hope, and if your scalp runs oily or flat, the Homestead Apple Cider Vinegar Shampoo Bar with Lemongrass gives hair a bit of extra lift. One small bar replaces a bottle of shampoo and often a bottle of conditioner as well.

None of this has to happen all at once, and honestly it shouldn't. The version of Plastic Free July that sticks is the one where you swap things as they run out rather than throwing away a half-full bottle to prove a point. Finish the body wash, then reach for a bar next time. That's it.

Choosing a bar you'll actually want to use

Here's where a lot of good intentions come undone. People switch to a bar for the planet, find it leaves their skin tight and squeaky, and quietly drift back to the bottle. The problem usually isn't bar soap itself, it's the kind made from harsh detergents or stripped of everything that makes soap feel nice on the skin.

Tallow is where the older recipes have a real edge. Rendered beef fat has a make-up of fatty acids that sits close to the oils skin produces on its own, so a well-made tallow bar cleans without that stripped, tight feeling afterwards. That's the whole reason our bars are built around it. If your skin leans sensitive, the Gentle Soothing Soap Bar keeps things fragrance-free, and the Simple Aloe Vera Soap Bar is a soft, easygoing everyday option. A bar you look forward to using is a bar you'll stick with long after July wraps up, which is really the whole point.

You don't need a cabinet full of matching zero-waste products to take part. Start with one swap this month, in one room, and let it stick before you move on to the next. If a bar of soap made on a farm in Victoria is where your plastic-free July begins, that's a good place to start. Have a browse through the full range and pick whichever one you'll actually reach for tomorrow morning.