Researchers in the United Kingdom have developed the world’s first magnetic soap, a discovery that could revolutionize industrial cleaning products.

Professor Julian Eastoe and his team created soap with iron rich salts that develop metallic cores within soap particles.

The resulting magnetic soap is easier to round up and remove from a system once it’s been added, something that could drastically improve clean ups like those surrounding oil spills when normal cleaning agents can cause significant environmental damage.

The discovery is published in the journal Angewandte Chemie.