4 Dirty Secrets About The Commercial Soap Industry

Here's four dirty secrets the commercial soap companies wouldn't want you to know.

1. It's not really soap! It's mostly detergent. Commercial soap companies spend a lot of money on misleading ads that claim natural but in actuality they use artificial foaming agents and chemical hardeners to produce a hard bar. 
2. Most contain sodium tallowate (animal fat). I'm not knocking anyone that uses animal fat. The pioneers used animal fat for the fats needed in soap. But commercial soap companies buy cheap animal fat. It makes you wonder where does it come from? Was it from animals from overcrowded feed lots? How was the animal treated or fed? 
3. Natural glycerin has been removed. There's big profit in selling glycerin for products like creams and lotions. Commercial companies remove the glycerin to gain a bigger profit by selling it or using for other products. Handmade soap makers don't remove glycerin so you benefit from all the naturally occurring glycerin in your soap. 
4. Claims of 20% larger does not mean your bar lasts longer. Yes, the bar is bigger because their commercial machines used to manufacture "soap" has put 20% more air in the bar giving the appearance of a bigger bar. 

The best advise we can give is know what you're buying. Be careful what you put on your skin. Buy local or handmade soaps from a source you trust. 

Soap Making: What's In Your Soap?

Are all soaps the same?  No. There are many different soaps out there.

 So how do you know what you’re getting? Read the ingredients. Know what you’re putting on your skin.

There are a few different ways to make homemade bar soaps. There’s Cold Process, Hot Process and Melt & Pour. We use the Cold Process method.  To make cold process or hot process bars of soap you need Sodium Hydroxide. Without it you cannot make bar soap. Then there’s melt & pour, which is typically in a block form you can buy at craft stores or online. You melt and pour in your own molds and add your own scents and herbs.

Then there’s the question of ingredients. We feel ingredients are very important! Which is why we use Non-GMO oils and feed our goats Non-GMO grains so the milk in our products are produced from goats whose diet is carefully monitored.

Here’s a list of our ingredients:  Goats milk, olive oil, coconut oil, babassu oil, safflower oil, castor oil, organic flax oil, *sodium hydroxide, organic cane sugar and some soaps may contain the following , essential oil, fragrance oil, rose petals, lavender flowers, rosemary, spearmint, oatmeal, mango butter, cocoa butter, shea butter, aloe juice, honey, eggshells. *Sodium hydroxide is not in the finished product. We cure our soaps at least six weeks which cures the sodium hydroxide (lye) out of the soap. We source Non-GMO oils for all our products.

The average cold process and hot process soaps contain: Water, a variety of vegetable oils, and can contain a variety of butters, herbs, essential oil and/or fragrance oil and sodium hydroxide.

The average ingredients list from melt & pour: Propylene Glycol, Sorbitol, Water, Sodium Stearate, Sodium Laureth Sulfate, Sodium Laurate, Glycerin, Goat Milk, Triethanolamine, Titanium Dioxide.

The typical ingredients in commercial soaps: Sodium cocoyl isethionate, stearic acid, coconut acid, sodium tallowate (animal fat), water, sodium isethionate, sodium stearate, cocamidopropyl bentaine, sodium cocoate and/or sodium palm kernelate, fragrance, sodium chloride, tetrasodium EDTA, trisodium etidronate, BHT, titanium dioxide, sodium dodecylbenzene sulfonate

There are a lot of great soaps out there and some that don’t meet our standards or other soap maker standards. You just have to decide what’s right for you. If you want to stay away from Non-GMO ingredients be sure what vegetable oils are being used in your soap. Some people use tallow in their soaps. We’re not knocking the use of tallow that’s what the pioneers used for fats in their soap. One thing I would caution is where did the fat come from? Was it from animals fed a diet on Non-GMO grains? When it comes to commercial soap many use tallow and given the cheap price I would worry that the tallow came from overcrowded feed lots not fed exactly healthy. Don’t be fooled with the commercial soaps that say now 20% larger. Often they fill their soap with air to make a bigger bar. It doesn’t make the bar last longer.

We hope when you’re out there shopping for soaps we’ve helped inspire you to read the ingredients and know what you’re putting on your skin.  
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