Saturday, February 16, 2008

Commercial "Soaps" vs handmade cold process soap

I have be actively reading other soaper's blogs and have found them to be quite entertaining. Hopefully, mine will be as pleasing to other people. I make cold process handmade soap using all natural ingredients with the exception of some fragrance oils. If you are new to handmade soap you should know that there is a big difference between the soap you buy commercially and what you would get from me. What I sell is actually soap made through a reaction of oils and lye called saponification. This chemical reaction creates soap (a salt) and glycerin. Most commercial "soaps" are not soaps at all, they are actually detergent bars. Commercial soaps usually use a synthetic detergent such as sodium lauryl sulfate. I am a PhD student in Molecular biology and biochemistry and we use this detergent quite regularly in our lab. I find it a little scary that so many people used products made from this detergent since when we use it in the lab we wear masks to protect ourselves from it. In addition to use of detergents as the cleaning agent, the naturally produced glycerin in commercial bars is removed since it can be sold and used for other products. If you are interested in checking out my soaps I have a website where I am selling them on LadybugSoapworks.etsy.com.

2 comments:

  1. Thanks for the Info! Do you mind if I link it to my blog?

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  2. Not at all. I would love it if you put a link to my blog. Thanks!

    ReplyDelete