Are You Ready for Ergonomic Soap?

By Susan Shaw, CPE

Do you feel like lately they make “ergonomic” everything?  A few weeks ago, I was at a hotel and came across ergonomic soap!  Now, this sounded farfetched as I read the box, but upon opening it I realized it made complete sense!  The bar of soap had a hole in the middle.  This serves two purposes:  1) going green and 2) ergonomics. The first purpose is easy to see…a hole in the middle of the bar means less soap which, in turn, means less waste since no one uses the whole bar of soap during a hotel stay.  The second purpose is what makes it ergonomic.  As we all know, when soap gets wet, it gets slippery and then you drop it on your foot and have to bend down to pick it up.  The ergonomic risks lie in how tight you have to hold a regular bar of soap to keep it from slipping and the awkward postures associated with retrieving the dropped soap. So the hole in the middle is the perfect size to fit your thumb and a couple fingers, making it much easier to hold with minimal force.  Pretty cool if you ask me!  How about you?  What every day “ergonomic” things have you come across lately?