What Are Hand Wash Tablets — And Why Are Kenyans Switching to Them?

Walk into any supermarket in Nairobi and the hand wash aisle looks the same as it did ten years ago: rows of plastic bottles, most of them 90% water, wrapped in more plastic, shipped in plastic crates. It's a category that has barely changed — until now.

Hand wash tablets are a fundamentally different approach to something you do dozens of times a day. Instead of buying a pre-mixed liquid in a plastic bottle, you buy a small, concentrated tablet. Drop it into a reusable bottle filled with water, wait a few minutes, and you have a full bottle of rich, foaming hand wash — with nothing left over except clean hands and an empty compostable wrapper.

How do hand wash tablets actually work?

Each Solotab tablet is a compressed disc of cleansing agents, skin-friendly moisturisers, and fragrance. When it dissolves in water, it activates into a foaming solution. Paired with a foaming pump bottle — which mixes air into the liquid as it dispenses — you get the same dense, luxurious lather you'd expect from a premium liquid hand wash, but from a tablet the size of a 10-shilling coin.

The science behind it is straightforward: most liquid hand washes are between 85% and 92% water. You're paying to ship, store, and dispose of water. Hand wash tablets remove the water from the equation entirely. You add your own water at home. What remains is the part that actually cleans.

Why is this relevant for Kenya specifically?

Kenya has a growing plastic waste problem. Nairobi alone generates thousands of tonnes of plastic waste every month, and single-use bathroom packaging — soap bottles, shampoo containers, lotion tubes — makes up a significant and largely invisible portion of that. Unlike plastic bags, which drew regulatory attention, bathroom plastic moves quietly from shelf to bin to landfill to waterway with almost no discussion.

Hand wash tablets change that equation. One Solotab tablet replaces one full 300ml bottle of liquid hand wash, with packaging that's compostable. At household scale, that's meaningful. At city scale, it starts to matter.

What does Solotab specifically offer?

Solotab is Kenya's first hand wash tablet brand, made under Novara Essentials. Each tablet dissolves in 300ml of water to create a foaming hand wash with real lather and real fragrance — not the watered-down, faintly scented experience of cheap liquid soaps. Current scents are Sweet Citrus (bright, clean, energising) and Eucalyptus Mint (soft, floral, grounding).

Packaging is designed to be kept. The glass-clear HDPE bottle with a foaming pump sits on your sink and gets refilled — not replaced. The tablets arrive in Kraft aluminum  wrappers. The outer box is made from FSC-certified board. There is no unnecessary plastic at any point in the chain.

Is it actually easier to use?

Yes — and that's the part people are most surprised by. You don't need to measure anything or follow complicated instructions. Drop one tablet into your bottle, add water to the fill line, replace the pump, wait two to three minutes, and your hand wash is ready. It's faster than driving to a supermarket to replace an empty bottle.

Solotab is launching soon. If you want to be first to try Kenya's cleanest hand wash, join the early access list.