Count the plastic bottles in your bathroom. Body wash. Shampoo. Face wash. Conditioner. Exfoliating scrub. Perhaps a shaving gel. Six bottles. Each will be empty within one to three months. Each will require replacement. Each has a plastic pump, a plastic cap, and a plastic body that will exist in the environment for several hundred years after its two months of usefulness.
The global personal care industry produces billions of these containers annually. A meaningful fraction end in recycling systems. The majority do not.
This is not a new problem. There is a two-thousand-year-old solution sitting on the bathroom shelf: a bar of Aleppo soap.
The zero-waste credentials of Avlia bars
No plastic bottle: a solid bar requires no plastic packaging beyond the optional cardboard box it ships in. The Avlia bar is the product and the packaging simultaneously — its solid form is the reason it requires no container.
No water content: liquid body washes and shampoos are sixty to eighty percent water. This water is shipped around the world in plastic bottles, serving no purpose in the product beyond maintaining liquid consistency. A solid bar contains no water — it is a concentrated product that adds water only at the point of use.
No preservatives required: water in a product creates a growth environment for bacteria and moulds. This requires preservatives — parabens, phenoxyethanol, isothiazolinones — to keep the product safe during its shelf life. Remove the water (as a solid bar does) and these preservatives are unnecessary. Avlia bars contain none.
Fully biodegradable: saponified olive and laurel oil break down in waterways and soil without leaving persistent compounds. No microplastics. No synthetic surfactants that remain in water treatment for months. What goes down the drain after an Avlia wash is, effectively, a very dilute olive oil solution.
Minimal packaging: the Avlia cardboard box is recyclable and compostable. The soap within it is the complete product — no inner plastic tray, no pump mechanism, no secondary packaging.
The product replacement calculation
A single Avlia bar, depending on percentage chosen and usage pattern, replaces: body wash (one to two months of daily use), facial cleanser (two to three months of daily use), shampoo (six to eight weeks of regular use). In practical terms, one Avlia bar in the shower can replace three plastic bottles simultaneously.
The Avlia 16% Bar is the all-rounder replacement: appropriate for body, face, and hair. The Avlia 100% Laurel Oil Shampoo Bar is the dedicated shampoo replacement for those who want targeted scalp care.
The environmental downstream
Personal care products enter the water system every time they are rinsed off. Synthetic surfactants like SLS are not fully removed by water treatment processes and persist in waterways. Fragrance compounds — particularly certain synthetic musks — bioaccumulate in aquatic organisms. Microbeads from exfoliating washes have been found in fish tissue globally.
Avlia bars leave none of these. The saponified olive and laurel oil that rinses off is metabolised by aquatic microorganisms in days.
The provenance dimension
Beyond the environmental case: Avlia bars are made by Syrian Sabonji artisans in Turkey — a community producing a UNESCO-recognised craft with materials that have been sustainably grown in the Levantine landscape for millennia. Laurel trees and olive trees are perennial, deeply rooted, low-input crops. Their oils are renewable raw materials from an ancient agricultural system.
This is the original sustainable personal care product: three natural ingredients, no synthetics, no plastic, no waste, made by human hands.
Find the Avlia zero-waste range at avliahome.com.