|
|
|
|
|
| 
|
|
|
||
|
Soap, Dr. Bronner's Way HOW SOAP IS MADE Soap is made by saponifying a fat or oil with a strong 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 strong alkali is either sodium (for bars) or potassium (for liquids) hydroxide. 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, glycerin and water (no alkali remains). Quality soap-making consists in great part in choosing the right proportions of the right oils with their different fatty acids. Most commercial soaps 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 use olive, hemp, and palm oils instead of tallow, and use 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 based soaps make a mild, smooth, creamy lather, because these oils contain longer chain unsaturated and polyunsaturated fatty acids. Dr. Bronner's makes a higher quality soap in other ways as well. Unlike most commercial soapmakers who distill the glycerin out of their soaps to sell, we retain it in our soap for its superb moisturizing qualities. We also superfat our soap with olive fatty acid, which both ensures that there is no free alkali, and lowers the pH, making a milder, smoother lather. We use rosemary extract and plant-derived vitamin antioxidants to protect freshness (the rosemary is effective at 0.005%, so it contributes absolutely no scent). We do not add any chelating agents, dyes, whiteners, or synthetic fragrances. Shop For Dr. Bronner Soaps 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. "Pure-Castile" is now also your guarantee that what you are consuming is a real ecological simple soap, not a complex blend of detergents with a higher impact on the Earth due to the waste stream during manufacture and slower biodegradability: unfortunately, many synthetic detergent blends are deceptively labeled as "Liquid Soap." WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN BAR & LIQUID SOAPS? Both our bar and liquid soaps are pure-castile, as they are all vegetable oil based. The new bar soap wrapper prominently states that it, too, is pure-castile, like our liquid. The difference between the liquid and bar is that the liquid soap uses potas-sium hydroxide to saponify the vegetable oils, versus the sodium hydroxide used to make the hard bar soap. WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A "FIXED" & "ESSENTIAL" OIL? The oils used for saponification are "fixed," while oils used for fragrance are "essential." They are quite different in structure and function. Fixed oils are bland non-volatile triglycerides, with relatively faint odor and taste, like cooking oils. Essential oils by comparison are super aromatic, composed of highly volatile compounds of certain plants. Shop For Dr. Bronner Soaps WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A "SOAP" & "DETERGENT/SURFICANT"? A soap is a very simple, low impact cleaning agent that improves water's ability to clean particulate and oily soils. It is made in a one-step process, with no waste products, and quickly & completely biodegrades. A surfacant is the same as a detergent. The word itself is a compression of "Surface Active Agent." Surfacants were developed in the first place because they clean and rinse better than soap in hard water. They usually are much more aggressive cleaners. Their virtue lies in all-purpose, industrial, and specialty cleaning applications. Unfortunately, they are often used in personal bodywashes, for which soap is superior. The synthetic manufacture of many surfacants, especially those built from petroleum, generates undesirable waste. Surfacants also do not biodegrade as rapidly as does soap. However, within detergents, there is a wide range in both effectiveness and ecological impact. Renewable resource plant-based detergents usually have less ecological impact than those that are petroleum-based. Dr. Bronner's Sal Suds is a blend of plant-based surfactants for all-purpose cleaning applications, and is a stronger cleaner than soap. It is not for bodywashing, although it uses ingredients found in detergent-based bodywashes. DR. BRONNER'S SOAPS Dr. Bronner's soaps have spread by quality and word of mouth alone into virtually every health food store in the country. Unsolicited articles raving about our soaps have appeared in magazines and newspapers as diverse as Natural Health, Outdoor Gear, Vogue, The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, The Associated Press, The Wall Street Journal, Parenting and New Age. Shop For Dr. Bronner Soaps Back to the Consumer's Guide IndexCOPYRIGHT © 2001(Used with Permission by Dr. Bronner's Magic Soaps) |
