2017 When life gave us lemons, we made soap

Published on Apr 10, 2017

Over the years, Health Pak has helped create some wonderfully unusual products—but turning used cocktail lemons into handwash is still one of our favourites.

In 2017, 42Below and Waiheke Island’s The Botanical Distillery came up with a brilliantly bonkers idea: collect the waste lemons from bars serving 42Below vodka, distil them and turn them into lemon-scented soap.

As the old saying almost goes: when life gives you lemons, make handwash.

The Botanical Distillery’s Helen Elscot and Jill Mulvaney knew how to extract the essential oil and hydrosol. What they needed from Health Pak was the right liquid soap—and lots of it.

It also had to work properly in pump bottles. Too thick and nothing would come out. Too thin and everyone would receive considerably more soap than they bargained for.

Toby Whyte created four different samples for testing and even hand-delivered one to Waiheke—going the extra nautical mile in the name of soap.

After one extremely lemony week in a Panmure warehouse, more than half a tonne of cocktail lemons had been transformed into enough fragrance to produce 140 litres, or 400 bottles, of handwash for bars across New Zealand and Australia.

Helen and Jill even starred in 42Below’s short film about the project.

It was sustainable, innovative, proudly Kiwi and just the right amount of ridiculous.

In other words, a very Health Pak kind of project.