Your Order

Items:
Total Ammount:

View Basket
Checkout


FAQ


Information


Quality Soaps Explained – Soaps have been made for millennia. Aside from making fire and cooking food, "saponifying" oil and fat into soap is one of the oldest and simplest chemical reactions known to humankind. In fact, the first soaps were accidentally made by fat dripping into the ashes of cooking fires. Soap is made by saponifying a fat or oil with an alkali. A fat or oil is a "triglyceride," which means that three fatty acids of various carbon lengths are attached to a glycerine backbone. The alkali is either sodium (for bars) or potassium (for liquids) hydroxide, made by running electricity through salt water. The saponification process is a simple one-step reaction with no waste generated: the glycerine is split off from the fatty acids, and the fatty acids combine with the sodium or potassium to form soap, while the hydroxide forms water. The result is soap, glycerine and water (no alkali remains in our soaps). Quality soap-making consists in great part of choosing the right proportions of the right oils with their different fatty acids. Most commercial soap manufacturers skimp on quality because of cost and use lots of tallow from beef fat with a little bit of coconut or palm kernel oil. Our unsurpassed soaps are made with olive, hemp and palm oils instead of tallow, and contain three to four times more coconut oil than commercial soaps. Saponified coconut oil generates high-lather cleansing even in hard water because it has shorter-chain saturated fatty acids. Hemp, olive and palm oil-based soaps make a mild, smooth, creamy lather because these oils contain longer-chain unsaturated and poly-unsaturated fatty acids.

What does "saponified" mean?
Saponification is the process by which sodium hydroxide (more commonly known as lye) and oils become soap. If an oil is listed as "saponified" on an ingredient label, that simply means it has undergone the chemical reaction of saponification. This reaction neutralizes the lye and makes the soap gentle enough for your skin. To learn more about the process, you can read this incredibly helpful and interesting information from Wikipedia.

What does "Castile" mean?
In earlier centuries, an all-vegetable based soap was made in the Castile region of Spain from local olive oil. By the turn of this century, "Castile" had come to mean any vegetable oil-based soap, versus animal (tallow) fat-based soap. "Pure-Castile" is now also your guarantee that what you are using is a real ecological and simple soap, not a complex blend of detergents with a higher ecological impact due to the waste stream during manufacture and slower biodegradability. Unfortunately, many synthetic detergent blends are deceptively labelled as "Liquid Soap" even when they contain absolutely no soap whatsoever.

Both our bar and liquid soaps are are all vegetable oil-based. The difference between the liquid and bar soaps is that the liquid soaps use potassium hydroxide to saponify the vegetable oils, versus sodium hydroxide used to make the hard bar soaps.

What is "Organic" and why is it so great?
The term "organic" refers to both sustainable farming practices and to products ecologically made from materials produced on certified organic farms. According to USA federal standards, such products have to be at least 70% organic by non-water, non-salt weight. Organic products not only support sustainable farming, but also farm worker health and ecological processing methods.

Unfortunately, the hollow market-driven needs of some "natural" body care companies are making a mockery of organic principles. Underneath fluffy, feel-good "organic" floral waters and infusions, many "organic" body care products are really just composed of the same synthetic cleansers, conditioners and preservatives found in mainstream products, often in part or wholly derived from petroleum. Culprit companies are inflating organic content by counting ordinary distilled water in "floral water" as organic, a practice which is not allowed under the National Organic Program.

A good example is Jason Soaps- their labels say natural and organic but they contain Sodium Lauryl Sulfate.

What is Sodium Lauryl Sulfate and why is it so bad?
When manufacturers mix sulfuric acid, monododecyl ester, and sodium salt together, they can, surprisingly, come up with an everyday product that is used by much of the general human population. Sodium lauryl sulfate (SLS), is a chemical compound used as a detergent in many beauty, household, and industrial products. In a pure state, sodium lauryl sulfate is known to emit toxic fumes in the presence of excessive heat because of thermal decomposition. But when mixed into diluted concentrations, they can be bottled and sold as your favorite brand name skin care product or cologne.

Its role in these products is usually that of a foaming or a dispersal agent. For example, toothpaste or bubble baths that foam when used contain sodium lauryl sulfate, as well as products that need its components dispersed homogeneously, such as fragrance oils in body spray. However, the use of sodium lauryl sulfate has been a subject of lot of controversy. It has arguably been called one of the most dangerous ingredients in products today. Household essentials like cosmetic cleansers, bath gels, shampoos, and dishwashing detergents contain up to fifteen percent sodium lauryl sulfate. Also adapted for industrial applications, sodium lauryl sulfate is present in higher concentrations when used in floor scrubbing and degreasing solutions, due to the compound's corrosive and grease-fighting properties.

Do our soaps contain any foaming agents/detergents like Sodium Lauryl Sulfate?
ABSOLUTELY NOT! The high foaming lather of our soaps is from their high natural vegetable, coconut and/or olive oil content, which makes a more luxurious and rich lather than any detergent can ever create.

What's the difference between an essential oil and a fragrance?
Basically, there are two ways to scent your soaps. You can either use fragrance oils or essential oils. At the risk of over simplification, here is the difference between the two types of oils. The very basic difference is that essential oils are "natural" and fragrance oils contain some synthetic components.

1. Essential oils are extracted from the natural products such as flowers, grasses, seeds, leaves, roots, barks, mosses, resins and the like through pressure, steam, or chemical means. They are the natural oils of the product. There has been nothing added to enhance or change these natural oils in any way.

2. Fragrance oils are any type of fragrance that is not totally natural. For example, you might take an essential oil or combination of essential oils and add a preservative, a scent enhancer, or some other product to the essential oil to improve it in some way. That would immediately make the oil a fragrance oil. Even if the product is 99% essential oil with some other product added, it is technically no longer an essential and must be sold as a fragrance oil.

We tend to favor fragrance oils (FO) in our soaps. They tend to be much less expensive than most essential oils (EO) and they are available in a wide range of different styles. For example, you may obtain a pound of rose oils by pressing or otherwise extracting the EO from a ton or more of rose petals. You can imagine what a costly process it must be to grow all of these roses and then to pick the petals off all of them and process those petals. When you are done, you have something called a rose petal EO. Now, imagine better living through chemistry. The chemists can synthesize the smell of roses for a few cents. Furthermore, they can vary that scent and can easily come up with dozens or hundreds of variations on that theme. A fragrance oil house may have many rose fragrances to choose from. This would also apply to all of the other common fragrances. Essential oils, however, are very popular in soap. Not all of the EO's are prohibitively expensive and many of them are quite nice. You will probably find that EO's are closely associated with aromatherapy. This is a rapidly growing field in North America and more people are getting into it every day. You should know that some EO's can be quite dangerous to some people and when used in certain applications. Additionally, many of the beneficial properties of essential oils can be destroyed by the heat involved in making our products. Finally, essential oils can be expensive to use, driving up the end cost to the customer.

Synthetics get a bad rap in some soaping circles, and there's certainly nothing wrong with wanting to use essential oils for a more "natural" product. We use "synthetic" fragrances in our scented products. But the fragrances we use are cosmetic grade (as opposed to industrial grade, such as the fragrances that appear in candles, air fresheners, etc.) We only use phthalate free fragrance oils.

Bottom line, we prefer Fragrances because of their cost effectiveness and because we have the opportunity to shop for just the right scent to complement our design.

What are Phthalates?
Phthalate refers to any of a range of chemicals called phthalate esters, which are used in industrial contexts to increase the flexibility of plastics such as polyvinyl chloride (PVC). Phthalate is used in a variety of products other than plastics, such as personal care products, glues, paints, and pharmaceuticals. There are dozens of varieties of phthalate, which was first produced in the 1920s. They are made by reacting a chemical called phthalic anhydride with certain alcohols, which can be varied to give the end product specific characteristics.

Raw phthalate has the appearance and texture of clear vegetable oil, with little or no smell. It biodegrades readily, so it does not accumulate to toxic levels in the environment. Since their introduction, the phthalate group of chemicals has undergone extensive research and testing to find out what-if any- health risks they pose to humans. Some health concerns have been raised about the presence of phthalates in baby bottles and other items which would cause them to be ingested by people.

The concerns about negative health effects from phthalates have in some cases led to the phasing out of these chemicals in North America and Europe. Some jurisdictions have outlawed the use of phthalates in children's toys and similar products. These worries have arisen in the wake of effects observed in test animals in laboratory conditions. High levels of phthalates were observed to correlate with hormonal changes and birth defects, as well as other damage to the liver and reproductive system of rodents. Some studies have been done which also indicate harmful effects on humans from these substances.

Do our products contain phthalates?
NO!!! Our products are phthalate free. WE DO NOT USE PHTHALATES!

What are Parabens?
Parabens are Parabens are a group of chemical compounds which are widely used as preservatives, especially in cosmetics. In addition to being used in cosmetics, parabens are also utilized by the pharmaceutical industry, and they sometimes appear as food additives as well. Parabens have been a topic of some controversy, due to consumer concerns about their safety, which explains why you may find products voluntarily labeled as “paraben free,” using their ingredients as a selling point for concerned consumers.

These chemicals are esters of para-hydroxybenzoic acid. Esters are defined as chemical compounds in which an acid molecule has bonded with an alcohol molecule, displacing a water molecule. Some parabens actually appear in nature, generated by plants as a way of defending themselves from fungal and bacterial invaders. The parabens used commercially are typically generated synthetically, ensuring that the products remain consistent, so that companies can be assured that they will work.

Typically, the concentration of parabens in cosmetics is very low, often less than 1%. A mixture of parabens may be used to create the best preservative effect, ensuring that molds, fungi, bacteria, and other unwanted visitors will not contaminate a product. It is also possible to use naturally derived preservatives, such as grape seed extract, but many of these substances have not been fully tested for efficacy, raising concerns about the safety and shelf life of products preserved with these substances.

Health concerns about parabens are primarily focused on their potential to act like estrogen compounds in the body. Substances which behave like estrogens are known as estrogenic compounds, and they do pose some health risks, especially when consumed in high volumes. Estrogens primarily impact the endocrine system, potentially creating an increased cancer risk. People who are concerned about parabens argue that their estrogenic traits make them too dangerous to use in food, cosmetics, and pharmaceuticals. WE DO NOT USE PARABANS.

What is Tetrasodium EDTA?
The term TETRASODIUM means "four atoms of sodium in a compound". EDTA is a synthetic amino acid used to cleanse the body of excess metals. It is an antioxidant and a preservative. It treats heavy metal toxicity. Tetrasodium EDTA also helps to maintain stability and appearance in cosmetics. Basically it is a synthetic preservative which can cause eye irritation and irritation to the mucous membranes. WE DO NOT USE EDTA.

What is Propylene Glycol?
A cosmetic form of mineral oil found in automatic brake and hydraulic fluid and industrial antifreeze. In the skin and hair, propylene glycol works as a humescent, which causes retention of moisture content of skin or cosmetic products by preventing the escape of moisture or water. The Material Safety Data Sheet warns users to avoid skin contact with propylene glycol as this strong skin irritant can cause liver abnormalities and kidney damage. WE DO NOT USE PROPYLENE GLYCOL.

What is Diazolidinly Urea?
Diazolidinyl urea is an antimicrobial preservative used in cosmetics. It is chemically related to imidazolidinyl urea which is used in the same way. Diazolidinyl urea acts as a formaldehyde releaser. WE DO NOT USE DIAZOLIDINLY UREA.

Some people have a contact allergy to imidazolidinyl urea causing dermatitis[1]. Such people are often also allergic to diazolidinyl urea. Diazolidinyl urea, as a formaldehyde releaser, is sometimes used in cosmetic products as a preservative, was recently re-classified by the International Agency for Research on Cancer to its highest toxic class, IARC 1 (known human carcinogen). Formaldehyde is classified as a probable human carcinogen by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which provides sufficient evidence that formaldehyde causes nasopharyngeal cancer in humans by the International Agency for Research on Cancer.[2]

What is Mineral Oil ?
A derivative of crude oil (petroleum) that is used industrially as a cutting fluid and lubricating oil. Mineral oil forms an oily film over the skin to lock moisture, toxins and wastes, but hinders normal skin respiration by keeping oxygen out. WE DO NOT USE MINERAL OILS.

What is Triclosan?
It is another chemical that has been widely used in detergents (like liquid hand 'soap' from dispensers) that is often found in anti-bacterial products. Triclosan kills any living micro-organism (such as bacteria), and is considered a pesticide by the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency). WE DO NOT USE TRICLOSAN.

What is Diethanolamine (DEA)?
A colorless liquid or crystalline alcohol that is used as a solvent, emulsifier, and detergent (wetting agent). DEA works as an emollient in skin softening lotions or as a humectant in other personal care products. When found in products containing nitrates, it reacts chemically with the nitrates to form potentially carcinogenic nitrosamines. Although earlier studies seemed to indicate that DEA itself was not a carcinogen, more recent studies show its carcinogenic potential, even in formulations that exclude nitrates. DEA may also irritate the skin and mucous membranes. Neways also avoids using other ethanolamines in its products: triethanolamine (TEA) and monoethanolamine (MEA).  WE DO NOT USE DEA, TEA or MEA.

What is BHT?
BHT (BHA/BHT; Butylated Hyroxytoluene) is another common preservative used in soap, cosmetics and food and is known as an instigator for immune system response that can include itching, burning, scaling, hives, and blistering of skin. WE DO NOT USE BHT/BHA.



Click on the image above for a bigger picture.