Reuse/Recycle small soap pieces or use up old soap bars
When making and cutting soap you are sure to end up with all kinds of soap ends. Some ways to recycle bar soap pieces would be to grate them up and make laundry soap, put them in soap saver bags, cut them up and add to a new soap base recipe, wrap them up and sell the soap ends or grate them up and create new bars.
- Grate up the end pieces and make laundry soap using this recipe – Laundry Soap Recipe
- Stack 5 or so end pieces and tie with a nice hemp rope or ribbon and sell at a reduced rate.
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- I have a resort that likes to buy my ends cut in half. This resort strives on supporting local business as well as supporting small business. The small bars are used as guest soaps and the regular size bars are sold in their gift shop.
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- Putting 5 or more scraps in a bag and selling them at a reduced rate – or add something else and make them grab bags. I sell bags of approx 8 soap ends for $5.00. That’s $5.00 I wouldn’t normally have and I find often the customers come back to buy a full bar later.
- Recycle a bar soap by making another bar soap with the end pieces. There really is no complicated recipe to doing this.
- Simply grate up the soap and put them in a microwave safe glass container – I use a Pyrex measuring cup.
- Add a little water to the grated up soap and microwave for 30 seconds or so and repeat until the soap mixture is melted completely.
- You will have to judge how much water to use for the amount of soap scrapes you have.
- Once the soap is melted it can now be poured into a mold – you can use almost anything or a mold you will find some great ideas here Soap trays and molds
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- Customer giveaways – cut up you end pieces and give them away at Craft Fairs and Events as samples.
- Cut the soap ends into half and string on a piece of hemp for a string of soap.
- Cut soap ends in to pieces and add to a new batch of soap – this will give it different color chunks in with the soap your just made
- Grate your soap ends and add the grated color pieces to a new batch of soap giving it a confetti look.
There you go you now have many ways to recycle soap ends.
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My wife is always ordering all these super-expensive fancy soaps on the Internet, so I thought to myself one day, couldn’t we just do this ourselves. This article was exactly what I was looking for. Now, if only I can get my wife on board too, because even though it doesn’t sound that hard, she will probably still just want to click that magic button on Amazon and have it delivered to the door. I’m going to show her this though and see if we can save some cash and go in a different direction. Thanks for the insights.
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Thanks for stopping by the website Brandon. I hope you can convince your wife to make her own soap. Have you looked at the step by step page. Make Natural Soap at Home -Step by Step instructions with pictures
That may help to convince her.
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I love spoap making. I used to make may own soaps and even had a small business on etsy selling them. It was super fun to do but I just didn’t have the time to keep up with work and the business. This reminds me so much when I made soap, it’s such a great hubby and it could be very lucrative in the health category. I stil try to buy handmade soaps as much as I can. Thanks so much for sharing and I cant wait to read more.
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Thanks Andrea. I love making soap it certainly can be time consuming. It’s busy now with upcoming Christmas Markets. Thanks for stopping by the website.
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These are great ideas for what to do with those leftover bar soap pieces. Another idea is to cut a slit in a sponge and put the small piece inside. When you submerge the sponge it will lather up and you can use it to wash your body. You could probably put several small pieces in, depending on the sponge.
Thanks for the great ideas for recycling soap pieces! 🙂
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Hi Stella, that’s an excellent idea! Thanks for sharing
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That is an awesome idea I would have never thought of doing that with the soap. I have to agree with one of the other comments though, if I could just get my wife into making the soap to begin with. Maybe if she sees this site it will help her decide to do it.
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Recycling is great maybe start your wife off with recycling soap pieces…..who know she may get interested in making her own from scratch.
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Some great ideas here for using your soap ends. Will pass this information on to my friend who makes soaps to sell.
She is always giving them away but why not use them as a promotional tool for your business and use them as testers for potential clients.
I also like your idea of wrapping them up with a ribbon or cord to sell at a discounted price.
Will the method of grating them and melting in the microwave also work for conventional shop soap? It seems like a good way to reuse when the soap becomes too small.
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I think your friend will be grateful for the information. I used to give my ends away and sometimes even throw them away when I got to many. As for melting conventional soap – I think your mean store bought. It would depend on how good a quality the soap is and whether or not it was made with natural oils. You could give it a whirl though maybe adding some Olive oil and see what happens. No harm in trying.
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In this age of recycling, you are sharing some great ideas and ways to not waste the cutting ends.
I was wondering would the microwave melting of soap pieces work for store bought soap as well? Seems my family does not like to use the small pieces of soap and I do not like to throw them out.
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You could try it with store bought soap, it would depend on how much oils that soap was made with. If it’s more a detergent bar; which many store bought ones are I’m not sure how well it will work. You can experiment though, maybe add some Olive oil and see what happens.
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Hi Tes. What a great idea for what to do with all those leftover soap pieces. I always try to meld them into the new bar, but it seldom works. It’s great that you are able to sell the recycled soap to make a bit of income from it.
It makes me wonder what happens to all the used soap left in hotel rooms. Do they recycle it? Could it be a source of soap for a recycle business?
Thanks so much for sharing this post.
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Hi Greg, I actually had a motel owner ask me if I would take her leftover soap pieces and melt them down. I was hesitant to do that. Mostly because I had no idea where she bought them from or what they were made of. She now buys my smaller soap pieces for her guest and most of the time the guest take the left overs with them.
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Hi Tes,
I would have never even considered recycling my leftover soap pieces. This a great idea. I always throw out the small leftover pieces. I have a lot of family and friends and collecting leftover pieces of soap will not be a problem for me. Where can I get soap molds or is there anything at home I can use as a soap mold?
Thanks for sharing a great idea with us!
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Hi Rika, you can use lots of things for soap molds. Here is a link to help your out Soap Making Molds – you can use just about anything
Allforhome (TM) Flexible Rectangular Silicone Soap Mold with Wood Box
How to Line a Soap Mold
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