How Anti-Soap Started
Toilet paper isn’t exactly an eco-hero. It’s convenient, but not sustainable — especially when made from old growth forests. I don’t think the answer is to feel guilty for using it, but to start questioning systems we’ve grown up with and unconsciously accepted.
In the US, toilet paper has been the standard for bathroom hygiene for generations. But even overlooking its environmental impact, it’s questionable as a stand-alone cleansing product. Do you feel clean after dry-wiping?
Wet wipes were supposed to be an evolution, but they also have a problematic environmental impact. They cause plumbing issues and leave tissue residue after use.
As a partial result, interest in bidets developed. Bidets are better — they significantly reduce paper use. But they aren’t generally available in public settings yet. And even bidets don’t eliminate all the unwanted residue. There is still some wiping involved.
Personally, before I considered bidets, I’d blow through mountains of paper in an effort to feel clean. So, I started supplementing with whatever sanitizer, liquid soap, body wash, shampoo, or even dish soap was within arm’s reach. I’d add a dab to my toilet paper right before wiping. It reduced the amount of paper I used, and I thought it was genius.
It wasn’t. I didn’t realize that most cleansers aren’t really healthy for use in that area. I was stripping the healthy bacteria from my body and leaving my skin open to harmful bacteria. I started noticing some gut discomfort after only a few months.
Some “solutions” we’ve passively accepted are not healthy for us as a species — and they’re having an incremental but cumulative effect on our planet, too. In line with the principle of correspondence: even though I was trying to improve a process, I was hurting myself.
I couldn’t see any habits changing with what was currently available. Bidets aren’t widely available in public settings in the US. I wasn’t going back to dry-wiping, I didn’t want to keep stripping my system by using disruptive products, and nothing I was doing had any effect on my personal ecological impact.
Since I couldn’t find an acceptable solution, maybe I could try to create one. I wanted to make a portable cleanser that could be applied to toilet paper before wiping — reducing the amount of paper needed, and would not harm the body’s delicate microbiome or damage the environment.
After lots of research and input from formulation labs, I realized we could potentially make something that had a less specific, but much more useful overall application. If it was healthy for our butt, it could be healthy for our whole body. And not just “non-stripping” but actually biome supportive. We could make an all-over cleanser that would support the skin biome wherever it was used. And if it was truly healthy for us, how could it not be at least benign for the Earth?
From there, the idea grew — from a niche hygiene solution into a philosophy about how we treat our bodies and our world. Anti-Soap wouldn’t just make wiping ‘better’; it would make cleaning healthier — for us and the planet.
However we choose to clean ourselves, it should be practical and effective, it shouldn’t harm us, and it shouldn’t harm the ecosystems we depend on.
-Anti-Soap founder
