Further Soap: The Hand Wash of the Moment

One of the biggest kicks I get from this blog is hearing about the stories and environmental commitment behind the brands. An exceptionally cool one arrived in my inbox recently from Further Hand Soap. It's a reuse-recycle inspiration and has been praised in InStyle, Daily Candy and New York magazine.

A few years ago, a California man named Marshall Dostal decided that he wanted to use biodiesel in his car. Environmentally conscious, he decided to swing by chic L.A. restaurants and pick up their used vegetable grease to process into biofuel, which he later did in his garage. He realized that he could use the by-product, glycerin, to make hand soap. Enter his wife. Once an event planner at Vogue, the savvy lady enlisted a former fragrance consultant at Gap to make the soap's scent a little more botanical, a little less spaghetti al pomodoro. And voilà. The fresh-smelling, wonderfully moisturizing Further Soap was born.

Pretty factor: $18.50 is a bit costly for hand soap, but if you have the money, it's a perfect product to stick in your bathroom this spring. Thanks to bergamot and exotic grasses, it smells like an even fresher, natural version of Gap Grass. It foams up generously and richly moisturizes hands with coconut and olive oils.

To buy: $18.50 at furthersoap.com and these locations