Earthlings have been discarding too much plastic too irresponsibly for the past five decades, and a lot of it has ended up in our oceans.  Plastic never goes away.  It just swirls around, breaking into smaller pieces, harming marine animals.

method, a company making cleaners that are safer for the Earth and human health, teamed up with Envision Plastics to produce a soap bottle made from plastic that washed out of the ocean onto the beautiful beaches of Hawai’i.  Here’s more about how they make the bottles and why ocean plastic is such a problem.

We tried this soap on a special offer from Grove Collaborative.  method ocean plastic dish + hand soap has their “sweet water” fragrance, which is okay–we don’t really like it, but it’s forgettable, not too strong.  These are the advantages of this soap:

• It works for washing dishes or washing hands–two products in one!
• It’s Earth-friendly soap with safe, mostly plant-based ingredients.
• Making the bottle out of plastic recovered from the oceans helps to clean up beaches, reduce harm to wildlife, and reduce demand for new plastic made from Earth’s dwindling supply of petroleum.
• The price is similar to many other hand soaps.

These are the only downsides we can see:

• After you’re done with this relatively small bottle, you can’t recycle it in a typical curbside recycling program.  Why not?!  Because it’s made from plastic salvaged off the beach, it may contain several different types of plastic.  Effective recycling requires strict separation of plastic types.  You know those numbers on the bottoms of bottles that tell you what type of plastic they are?  This is #7, other.  Most recycling plants can’t work with #7.
• Buying hand soap in a pump bottle is more expensive and more wasteful than refilling a pump from a large package of soap, which is is more expensive and more wasteful than diluting hand soap with water in a foamer.

Overall, this is a fine choice if you’re looking for a soap pump.  You could refill it and keep using your ocean-plastic pump for many years.

Click here to get $10 off your first order from Grove Collaborative!  If you’re not sure whether a subscription to eco-friendly products would work for you, click here to learn more about Grove Collaborative (formerly known as ePantry) and how it works.

What? Oh, you’re wondering about the Zygons.

Official image of Zygons from doctorwhotv.co.uk

When I was in kindergarten, my parents told me that they had discovered a wonderful TV show that was on PBS on Saturday nights, and I could stay up late to watch it. That show was “Doctor Who,” and the very first story I saw was “Terror of the Zygons.”

I loved the show and instantly became a fan, but I also was terrified of the Zygons and worried that they might be under my bed, plotting something.

The Zygons made such an impression on me that I immediately thought of them when I saw this soap bottle!  I mean, it has similar ridges of bumps, and it comes from the sea….

But if what the Zygons are plotting in this century is to harvest our discarded plastic and convert it into convenient pump bottles that match my pink-and-gray kitchen, that’s a nefarious plot I can get behind!

Visit the Hearth & Soul Hop and To Grandma’s House We Go for more household tips.