MOST PEOPLE HAVE never heard of hygiene poverty, but the easiest way to explain it is if I ask you to think about your morning routine. What are those simple steps you take every morning to get yourself ready for the day?

For me, I get up, shower and wash my hair. Skincare. Moisturise. Brush my teeth. Hair. Deodorant. Makeup. Perfume. And that’s all before I have my first cup of tea. I know that if I wake up late and skip any of those steps, I don’t feel right in myself for the rest of the day.

We’ve all been there, where we stay up too late the night before watching one too many episodes of a show, which means sleeping through your alarm the following morning and 10 minutes to leave – or you’ll be late.

So you run around in a frantic panic until you’re out the door. And it’s not until you’re walking into work that you realise you forgot to put deodorant on. You spend the whole day worrying if anyone will notice.

Imagine living with that feeling everyday. That is hygiene poverty.

It can be skipping brushing your teeth because you’ve squeezed out every last drop of toothpaste and can’t afford to buy another. It can be the sinking feeling of realising that you can’t stretch your shampoo any more and will have to go about your day – or week – with unclean hair.

The emotional impact of not having access to essential hygiene products is huge and can have far reaching implications across your day to day life and wellbeing. This is what The Hygiene Bank Ireland is trying to end.

Volunteer work

I am co-founder of The Hygiene Bank Ireland, and one of the many volunteers who make up the grassroots people-powered charity that believes being and feeling clean should not be a luxury or a privilege, but should be a right.

I got involved in January 2020. I had recently moved back to Dublin after spending a year studying in Galway, was working a job I knew was temporary and back living with my mammy after a year away. My masters was in International Human Rights Law and I had spent the previous 12 months learning and researching about all the humanitarian issues across the world, and honestly I wanted to fix them, or at least some of them.

It didn’t take long to realise that Ireland wasn’t a great place for a lot of people, and so I thought: why not look closer to home? I began volunteering in a hygiene bank organisation – it was very casual and I could give as much (or as little) of my time as I wanted.

Skip forward six weeks and the impact of Brexit began to make itself known and we were given a choice by the UK management team. They said we could either stop operating in Ireland, or go out on our own and become our own entity. So we went and spoke to our community partners, asking them ‘would regular donations of hygiene items be helpful?’ and the response was overwhelmingly ‘yes!’.

We had found that hygiene poverty was a huge issue in Dublin, and so we set about to change that.

Before my work with the organisation, I had never heard of hygiene poverty. The feedback we got was that hygiene items were always asked for, but never on hand. We know that food banks exist, and so why had no one ever thought that people would then also struggle to afford hygiene items? 

We believe that it’s not right in 21st century Ireland that people are struggling to afford basic hygiene items.

Unfortunately, many in Ireland are making the incredibly difficult decision between heating their homes, paying their bills or buying hygiene items. That is what we are on a mission to end. According to recent research, 41% of those surveyed had gone without or cut back on the use of hygiene items as a result of their financial situation; with 48% prioritising other spending ahead of purchasing hygiene items.

These figures are hard to read, but they reflect what we are seeing everyday. We find that people cut back on buying hygiene items way before they reach out to organisations like ours for support. Because hygiene poverty isn’t that well known, we see this happen all the time, and it happens to everyone – not just people who are in receipt of care but people who are being forced to pay high rents or those who live in one-income households, or are working in minimum wage jobs.

It can take many different forms but can look like parents reusing dirty nappies, one family sharing a toothbrush or being unable to wash clothes as often as is necessary. It’s the simple things like knowing if you run out of shampoo that there is a spare in the drawer.

The organisations that we donate to have reported more and more people coming forward who are struggling to afford hygiene items over the course of the pandemic. Hygiene poverty is affecting families experiencing poverty, people living in homeless accommodation, refugees and asylum seekers arriving into Ireland, people paying high rents, domestic violence refugees, and many others. We donate products to organisations, so that they can ensure those they support can access these essential hygiene items when they need them.

For the first time since 2019, we have a waiting list of organisations who need us. This is a direct result of the cost of living continuing to rise, which means the need for our services is increasing, while those who have the means to donate to us is decreasing.

However, since we began operating, we have donated over 30,000 kg of hygiene items to 50 organisations thanks to our 80 volunteers. We have had massive growth over the past 18 months and we are now at a place where we are planning ahead rather than just reacting to what needs to happen.

The longer we operate and the larger we get, the more people we find who are struggling. But we will continue to operate until we don’t need to.

How it works

We ask the public to donate new or unused hygiene items to one of our over 80 drop-off points across the country. These are in local businesses like hairdressers and pharmacies and are manned by local volunteers. We then donate these items to local community partners. We operate out of local businesses and organisations really embedded in communities so that the public don’t have to go out of their way to donate to us.

Fundamentally we believe in spreading kindness. Something simple like buying an extra item on your next weekly shop can make the world of a difference to someone struggling.

Our community partners have said that our donations allow their clients and service users to engage fully in society and that our donations allow them to feel more confident. Most recently, one Community Partner told us that donations of suncream had made a huge difference to families during the recent heatwave as their children were able to play safely outdoors without worrying about sunburn.

Our aim is simple: We want everyone in Ireland to have access to the basics but we cannot do it alone.

As part of National Hygiene Week, we are calling on the government to back a living wage to help tackle the issue of hygiene poverty, and the Central Statistics Office to include the inability to afford hygiene items as a deprivation indicator.

National Hygiene Week takes place from September 12 – 18th. To learn more about The Hygiene Bank Ireland and how best to support click here.