Bar-shaped soap is great for sliding into your palm and all over your body, but as we all know it can be hard to keep a good handle on. Tetra Soap is a clever new solution to this little dilemma, taking the form of a tetrapod to more easily remain in your grasp.
The oils and fats that give soap its cleaning abilities also make it a slippery customer, especially once its been used in the shower or wash basin a few times. Tetra soap looks more like a paperweight than a cleaning product, but the natural oils packed inside are claimed to produce a creamy lather rich enough for any pair of dirty hands.
Ingredients include castor oil, myrrh essential oil, organic citrus bioflavonoids and tea tree oil, which are cast in a silicone mold to give the soap its tetrapod shape, before it is finished off by hand and cured for 30 days.
Palm oil is also listed as an ingredient, and is a commonly found in cold-pressed soap like this as it contributes to its hardness. The popularity of palm oil for use in not just soap, but also the food industry, is a huge driver of deforestation for the sake of palm oil plantations, and therefore contributes significantly to biodiversity loss. Sustainable sources of palm oil do exist and we enquired with Tetra Soap about where their's comes from, but did not receive a response.
It does look like soap that would be easier to hold, but one that wouldn't agree so well with the contours of the body, so perhaps it would be best suited to hand washing duties. The gap created underneath the soap also means it won't be resting in water when not in use, which should extend its lifecycle.
Following a successful Kickstarter campaign, Tetra Soap is available now through the company's website, with prices starting at US$23 for a single pack.
You can check out the promo video below, and we'll update this story if we hear back regarding how the company sources its palm oil.
Source: Tetra Soap
