In the lead up to Earth Day, we round up the best cruelty-free vegan hand soaps for a kinder sink-side
Recent times have (we hope) seen you pay much more attention to the cleanliness of your hands. But while sanitisers and hand soaps continue to fly off shelves, it’s easy to forget about the ethics behind the products that lure us in with their antibacterial promise. In the approach to Earth Day (22 April, FYI), might we suggest you consider something more planet-friendly to dispense onto your palms before mechanically chanting the Happy Birthday rhyme two times over. Many of our favourite grooming brands produce cruelty-free hand soaps as standard, while others, some which might be lower on your radar, go the extra step to omit nasty chemicals and packaging waste for a totally sustainable product. So here’s everything you need to know about vegan hand soaps and the best ones to have by your sink.
Isn’t every hand soap vegan?
In short, no. Traditionally, soaps are created from mixing animal fats with an alkali. Together, these two ingredients work to trap dirt in water particles allowing them to be rinsed off under a running tap. The fat used in bar soap most commonly comes from cows in the form of lard, but other ingredients you might find in bar and liquid hand soap alike include stearic acid, which often comes from animal by-products, plus glycerin and myristic acid, which can be derived from tallow and other animal fats.
Which plant-based ingredients should I look out for in vegan hand soaps?
Vegan hand soap brands tend to swap out the animal fats for nut oils including macadamia and cashew, or olive oil, which, as well as having the same cleaning properties, tend to be much more nourishing to the skin. Though removing certain animal-derived chemicals and foaming agents can lessen the amount of lather or foam a vegan hand soap can produce, this element of hand washing merely makes us feel cleaner, but doesn't actually contribute to the soap’s cleansing properties.
Are vegan hand soaps more sustainable?
Aside from the obvious upshot to using products from brands that don’t depend on the by-products of an agriculture industry contributing to greenhouse gas emissions, you’ll find that vegan hand soaps tend to go the extra step for a more sustainable product, avoiding plastic with packaging made from recyclable materials while also omitting other harmful chemicals in their formulas, which end up down our plug holes and in our waterways.
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