Volume 21
A Newsletter by the Soap Factory
www.alcasoft.com/soapfact/
Now everyone is talking and thinking "green". Well, we have been "green" for over 20 years. Our soaps are made from renewable ingredients and our process to produce the soap does not require large output of energy. We have small electric motors to stir the soap vats. The reaction itself provides it own heat source. We also cut our bars soaps by hand with a wire cutter jig to hold the soap while it is being cut into bars.
As many of you know our soap is mild and biodegradable. Soap is not found in nature. But it is a reaction that was early observed by humans. All you need is some ashes from cooking fires and greasy pots to be washed. People would take those ashes, wet them and rub them on the pots. The pots became slippery and had suds but the grease was gone. The wet ashes and grease, which was fat from cooking, made a early soap on the spot. In fact a Peace Corp worker friend of my son told us that some villagers even today use that method for cleaning their cooking pots. During Medieval times clothes were washed in tubs of ashes and water; then rinse with clear water. The ashes when mixed with the water make an alkali solution which turns the oil and grease on the clothes to soap which was washed away in the water.
We pride ourselves on making the most natural and mild soap possible. The method we use to make all our soaps is the basic "cold process". The "cold process" has been used by the home soap maker for centuries. In the traditional procedure for home soap making, the glycerin is not removed. One question we are often asked is what type of glycerin we add to our soaps. The answer is, we do not add the glycerin to our soaps. It is generated when the soap is made. Now a little bit of the chemistry of soap making. The reaction which causes the formation of soap occurs when fat or vegetable oil is mixed with an alkali. The fat / oil is split by the alkali into two new substances, soap and glycerin. Thus glycerin is not added but obtained from the very fats and oil used to make the soap. This occurs in all basic soap making ; but with home made soaps, the glycerin is not removed from the soap mixture by salt water as in all other soap making methods.
Glycerin is removed by commercial soap makers, because it is a valuable by- product. It is used in the production of explosives, cosmetics and medicines to mention a few. But leaving glycerin in soap makes the soap an enhanced product. One comment heard about commercial soaps, in general, is that they are drying. Home made soaps are not. Why? Because the glycerin remains in the soap. Glycerin is a colorless, scentless syrupy compound. Glycerin retains water and is a moisturizer. Glycerin prevents the soap from drying out. Soap with its natural glycerin keeps the soap moist. Soaps without glycerin are dry and they take the moisture from the skin. This is why soaps without their glycerin left in are drying. Solvent properties of glycerin enable home made soaps to remove stains without harshness. By the way the name of the soap making reaction is saponification.
We also make our liquid soaps by the "cold process" batch method. The major difference between making the bars soaps is the alkali base is potash, which makes a soft soap, a thick paste that will never get firm. To the paste we add enough water to dilute soap for ease in customer use. The other special feature is the oil used to make our liquid is pure olive oil no other oils are used. We have not found any other liquid soap on the market made only using olive oil.
For those who really enjoy or need our liquid soap due to chemical sensitivity, we sell the liquid soap by the gallon. The gallon size is only available unscented. Eight 16oz. bottles of the liquid equals a gallon. Eight 16 oz. bottles sell for $5.85 each, totaling $46.80, while 1 gallon sells for $35. This is a savings of $11.80.
For "greener" laundry use cooler temperatures when washing your clothes. This allows for larger loads without worrying about colors bleeding into whites and other colored items. This saves both water and the energy required to run the washers and dryer, Our liquid soap works well in areas with soft water. If you live in an area with hard water adding Borax or baking soda to the water will enable our liquid soap to wash better. See the respective boxes for amounts to use.
A little piece of information we picked up. In our local paper, the Boston Globe, a reader asked why colored bar soap does not make suds the color of the bar, The answer given by the science writer of the column was the dilution of the color substance is so small compare to the amount of soap that suds have no discernible color to the eye and thus appear white.
A question we are asked frequently do we use preservatives in our soap products. The answer is we do not employ preservatives in the soaps. We rely on the natural alkalinity of the soap to keep organisms from growing in our soaps. If a soap has it ph lower enough to encourage the growth of bacteria and molds, toxic preservatives are required to prevent this from occurring. The soaps with lower than the natural ph of soap have two type of additional ingredients the ph lowing agents and the preservative ones. Any extra item introduced in a soap solution can prove to be an irritant. We prefer to keep our soaps to their basic components of soap, glycerin, and water.
We often asked by people to furnish them with information on both soap making and its history. We think we have done a pretty good job of this with The History of Soap Making found at our Web Site. This write-up includes a bibliography. Many of the books listed offer good insight to early American ways. But many of these books are old and hard to locate as they may even be out of print. May we recommend that if you wish to search for this type of information or other good source material on history, you check out the Barely Read Bookstore. This store is located is in Sudbury Mass, but they are on the Internet at barelyreadbooks.com. They are able to search from books across the internet and ship out across the country.
The purpose of our company is to provide people who have come to appreciate the benefits of hand crafted soap with a high quality handmade soap that is economical enough to use as their everyday personal skin care soap.
When buying gifts for others, remember yourself. In the cold dry months to follow you will want to stock up on a supply of our Castile soaps to keep your skin soft all winter long.
Yours in "Green" Suds,
Marietta and Arthur Ellis