A charity and a soap company have joined forces to raise awards of hygiene poverty, with thousands of households across the country having to chose between washing or eating.
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00:00From the very beginning, we said yes to the project, even though I think I was the only
00:05one saying yes at the time. I was like, yeah, that's a great idea. I came back and said,
00:09guys, guess what we're doing. I think they looked at me and was like, I don't think we're
00:13going to be able to do that. But I think it was the purpose of the campaign, the doing
00:18good, the raising awareness, the social good that was really attractive to us, and obviously
00:24the bonkers idea as well.
00:26Thousands of people across the UK are facing poverty issues at the moment, with the cost
00:30of living crisis ongoing. I'm here in an unassuming business park near Barry to speak to people
00:35from the Good Wash company, who've got involved in a charity to make a product a little bit
00:39unique.
00:40We were approached by the Hygiene Bank UK about a year ago now to help raise awareness
00:47of hygiene poverty in the UK, which is the inability to afford basic wash products like
00:53soap, shampoo, dust paste. And they were saying that one in 12 people in the UK can't
00:59afford those basic things. So they were like, can you help us make an edible soap bar? Not
01:05to, you know, to sell in kind of general sale, but more like a protest bar to raise awareness.
01:12Mandy and the team at Good Wash didn't really know what they were getting into when they
01:16agreed to be a part of the plans, but the Hygiene Bank's idea wasn't what they were expecting.
01:22So in my head, I was thinking, you know, like seaweed, oats, breakfast bar or something.
01:28But no, the Hygiene Bank wanted for us to do like an evening meal type bar. So chicken
01:35tikka masala, beans on toast, and beans on toast was kind of their preference. So we
01:40went with that. So this is what the bar looks like. This is like an older one, but it's
01:45the colour of beans. It smells of beans on toast. So it does. Yeah, absolutely. You can
01:53get the kind of toast in it. Yeah. And then we've got snack size ones. It wasn't an easy
01:59process creating what could well be the world's first edible soap. And they needed a lot of
02:04help from elsewhere to make sure they got that proper beans on toast taste and was also
02:08usable as soap. It turned into a bit more of a science experiment. The team thought,
02:14this is just too difficult. You know, lots of sleepless nights think we're not going to do it
02:17because when you say yes to something, you only put your name to it. You want to achieve it. So
02:22yeah, it was a difficult process. We had lots of experimenting. It was like Willy Wonka soap
02:27factory here. At one point, we well, we still are working with Swansea Uni and their lab on
02:34developing new products. And we went to the Food Technology Centre, who are notorious for making
02:40different flavour ice creams. So we kind of looked for support. And yeah, and we did it.
02:46Along with it being a bit of fun, it's hard to ignore the problems faced by so many people all
02:51across the country in terms of hygiene poverty. And that was something the Good Wash company says
02:55is a big part of their ethos, smelling good as well as doing good.