To get the best lather out of your soap or body wash, use a bath sponge in the shower or tub. Bath sponges come in many different forms, from natural sea sponges to mesh puffs to scrubby loofahs.

You can pick up a synthetic sponge for just a few dollars. But a natural sea sponge, hand-harvested from the Mediterranean seafloor, could set you back $30. Harvesting these sponges is dangerous, and ...

Did you know that the word ‘loofah’ comes from the luffa plant? It's a gourd in the cucumber family that, when dried out, was the original shower scrubber. In other words, your loofah started out ...

Where do sponges come from? It’s a question I hadn’t considered until my visit to Tarpon Springs, a charming town north of Tampa on Florida’s Gulf Coast. They seem to come from supermarket shelves and ...

Tarpon Springs, Florida, supplies roughly 70% of the world's natural sea sponges. Spongers dive 60 feet underwater to harvest the sea creatures. The majority of the fisherman are Greek immigrants, and ...