Block soap is like dehydrated liquid soap, and has the same weight and concentration benefits as anything that has had the water removed (Yoda, for instance, was tall and wrinkle-free before he was desiccated by centuries of using the Force). The environmental benefits are clear – no water means less to transport around the world in trucks and on boats.
The problem, as anyone who has showered in prison will tell you, is that a bar of soap can be slippery, jumping from your fingers as you lather yourself and precipitating a rather hazardous bending-over maneuver to pick it back up.
Nathalie Stämpfli’s “Soap Flakes” dispensers fix this. They shave bars of soap into soap flakes, which are quick to foam, and the dispensers are hard to drop. One is fixed to a wall, operated by pushing on a lever at the front. The other is like a pepper-mill for soap: twist the top and the soap curls out of the grater on the bottom.
Best of all, they look great. In fact, the handheld mill has a dome that looks just like the plexiglass helmet of the brainiac aliens in Tim Burton’s Mars Attacks. How’s that for livening up a boring shower?
