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Eco-amenity

reduce plastic waste
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For hotels: A small shampoo bottle, molded out of soap, and hollow inside. Filled with shampoo, and capped with a lid made of soap.

Because maybe some hotels cater to customers who are more concerned about the environment than $0.35 worth of plastic bottles that soon become trash.

Details:
1) The soap bottle would have to be made thicker than absolutely necessary to be sure that there's enough soap to wash hands & shower without prematurely developing a leak. But hotel soaps are already bigger than they need to be (at least in the U.S.; less so in Europe).
2) Instead of an actual separate lid, it might be more workable to simply seal the bottle with a soap plug and design the bottle to be broken open when shampoo is needed.
3) Perhaps not as useful as plastic shampoo bottles for multi-night stays, but many hotels add new bottles and new soaps every day whether the previous supply has been exhausted or not.

beauxeault, Mar 06 2002

No-touch Soap Dispenser http://www.airdelights.com/oneshot.html
[reensure, Mar 06 2002]

[link]






       Good! One flaw is trying to unscrew a soap lid, from a soap bottle, with soap on your hands..   

       Why don't more hotels use the wall dispensers in the shower? (maybe due to the conditoner junkies we have in the group).
rbl, Mar 06 2002
  

       Great idea [beauxeault].
phoenix, Mar 06 2002
  

       Apropos this idea, I recently read how liquid-centred chocolates are made. It's all to do with the relative solubilities of glucose, sucrose and fructose. You make the filling as a smooth paste with sucrose (i.e. normal sugar) and encase it in chocolate with an enzyme which breaks down the sucrose into glucose and fructose. These sugars are shorter chain molecules and are more soluble and so the paste slowly liquifies over a period of several weeks.
To make shampoo-filled soap, I'd probably freeze pellets of shampoo and then cover them with soap.
hippo, Mar 06 2002
  

       Hm. Solid shampoo "bars" ? Then no container would be necessary. They could completely dissolve into wet hair.
waugsqueke, Mar 06 2002
  

       Excellent suggestion... Waugsqueke's suggestion is better, mainly because if I get soap on my hair it dies and I can't do a thing with it. Solid shampoo in the style of those dissolving bath balls... and the soap wouldn't need to be packed really anyway.
Danzarak, Mar 06 2002
  

       I think shampoo is bogus. I use bar soap and my hair is still okay. Bar conditioner would be nice.
bristolz, Mar 06 2002
  

       Forget the shampoo and soap. A lagre tub can be modified into an ultrasonic cleaner or cavitator for personal cleaning. If an item can be cleaned with liquid, in our case water, then it can be cleaned much faster and more thoroughly with cavitation. Just think of the fun you'll have too. "Honey would you like to cavitate together tonight?"
dag, Mar 06 2002
  

       Sounds like that would hurt?
sappho, Mar 06 2002
  

       Plus it would help prevent kidney stones . . . (Don't they use ultrasonic tanks to treat kidney stones, or did I dream that?)
bristolz, Mar 06 2002
  

       They do indeed. You also get REALLY clean.
dag, Mar 06 2002
  

       Aren't we on our way back to shampoo4u?
rbl, Mar 06 2002
  

       O.K. Back to the shampoo in a soap. My only concern would be when I want to shampoo my hair and not use the soap.
dag, Mar 06 2002
  

       ...getting clean from the inside out...
phoenix, Mar 06 2002
  

       Who needs packaging? <see link>
reensure, Mar 06 2002
  

       Thanks, reensure. I just ordered 2 of those dispensers. One for the laundry room and one for kids bath (you know, the little people who can somehow manage to use an entire bottle of liquid soap in one weekend).
bristolz, Mar 06 2002
  

       I tried the bar-soap routine for my hair at one time. It was recommended to me by a friend who swore by it. She suggested I use Ivory. It gave me itchy scalp.   

       Notwithstanding that, you're a great advertisement for the technique.
waugsqueke, Mar 07 2002
  

       UnaBubba: Same here. Wondered for years what REAL poo was in relation to heads, or why people would want to rub fake poo <that often looks like another body secretion, although I've read it's good for the hair> on their heads..   

       I have a peppermint liquid castile soap <"DON'T DRINK SOAP! DILUTE! DILUTE! OK!"> that works great for both body and hair. Definately not 'no more tears', though, more like 'No, MORE tears.'   

       Re ultrasonic cleaners: I have seen small ones for jewelry and such that say 'do not put your fingers in while it's running' or somesuch, saying that it can burn you.
StarChaser, Mar 07 2002
  

       waugs: you still have to rinse, or was that not part of her bar-soap scheme?
bristolz, Mar 08 2002
  

       :P   

       After I rinsed, my hair would be so squeaky my hand would get stuck in it.
waugsqueke, Mar 08 2002
  
      
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