How Handmade Soap Is Funding Addiction Recovery in Leeds

Getting Clean started with soap bars wrapped in brown paper, sold by people who understood something most soap brands never have to think about: recovery from addiction.

A Soap Business Built on Lived Experience

Getting Clean is a UK-registered Community Interest Company based in Leeds, Yorkshire, run by people with lived experience of addiction. That's not a marketing angle bolted on afterwards — it's the reason the business exists. Soap making, specifically the hands-on, slow craft of cold process soap making, doubles as a therapeutic activity, and the business itself exists to create real, paid employment and peer support for people in recovery.

To date, Getting Clean has engaged around 140 people in recovery through its volunteer programmes, run more than 200 therapeutic soap-making workshops, delivered 30 conservation and community clean-up projects, and provided paid employment to people recovering from addiction, work recognised by the Living Wage Foundation and Social Enterprise UK.

Why "Getting Clean" Means More Than Soap

As the team put it: getting clean means more than stopping using drugs. It's an ethos rooted in being conscious of harmful chemicals, and taking care of your body and your surroundings — values that addiction often erodes. That's part of why the product itself matters, not just the mission behind it: every bar is cut free of the unnecessary, harmful chemicals found in a lot of mass-produced cosmetics.

Where the Money Goes

Getting Clean donates 50% of profits to addiction charities and Lived Experience Recovery Organisations (LEROs) across the UK. A LERO, as defined by UK Government guidance, is a community organisation led by people with lived experience of drug and alcohol recovery, delivering peer support, harm reduction and recovery services. There are at least 50 LEROs currently operating in the UK, and Getting Clean's model is built around proving that people in recovery aren't broken — they're underestimated.

The approach has also drawn academic interest: Getting Clean has been endorsed by Professor David Best, the world's first Professor of Addiction Recovery, and has been the subject of peer-reviewed research from the University of Bradford, published in BMC and indexed on the National Library of Medicine, looking at how peer-led models like this one can support recovery and reduce stigma around addiction.

Getting Clean has also been covered by BBC News, The Times, and the Yorkshire Evening Post for its work supporting recovering addicts in Leeds.

Every Wash Helps

The mission is simple: to make sure everyone in the UK recovering from addiction has access to peer support and employment opportunities. Every bar sold, cold-processed and handmade in Leeds, puts that mission into practice.

You can read more about the story behind Getting Clean, see the full impact figures, or shop the range and support the mission directly.