❤︎ Let's make Organic soap at home ❤︎

What is organic soap?

Organic soap is simply better for your skin. It contains natural ingredients such as plant-derived base oils, glycerin, and essential oils. By contrast, synthetic, mass-market soap is made of petroleum-based lathering agents, synthetic fragrances, harsh dyes, and dangerous preservatives. Soap

What do I mean by organic soap?

When I talk about organic soap, most of the time I’m talking about natural and organic soap. Natural soap is made out of fats or oils, water, lye, and often essential oils and natural dyes. Organic soap also has the added benefit of being made of ingredients that are produced with organic farming practices, that is, farming practices that don’t use pesticides or synthetic fertilizers. So organic soap is natural soap, but it is also one step better.

Organic soap is made of ingredients that are better for your skin

Base oils

Organic soap is made from natural ingredients, and in most cases, those ingredients are also organically farmed. The majority of the soap bar is made of what are called base oils. We use some of the same base oils for soapmaking that you can use for cooking. So if it’s safe to eat, it’s probably also safe to put on your skin. In the case of our latest recipe, those oils are coconut, olive, and castor bean oil. (We used to use palm oil but are phasing it out because of the massive amount of environmental destruction that it takes to produce.)

Essential oil

Another ingredient in our soap is essential oil. Essential oils are the volatile or fragrant compounds in certain plants. Most essential oils are distilled from things you would eat such as citrus fruit or herbs. Two examples of essential oils we use are lemon essential oil and rosemary essential oil. Experts say you shouldn’t put pure essential oil on your skin because it is very concentrated and can cause irritation. However, essential oil diluted with another oil is just fine.

Glycerin

Most organic soap also contains glycerin. Glycerin is a natural product of the soapmaking reaction. A lot of mass-market soapmakers and some small-batch soapmakers take out the glycerin because it makes the soap bar last longer or because they can sell the glycerin to use in other cosmetic products. However, when glycerin is left in the soap bar, it acts as a humectant, or a substance that attracts moisture from the air into the skin. Two other natural humectants are aloe and honey.

Organic soap has many other benefits

In the last part of this article, I’m going to talk about why organic soap is the best choice if you’re concerned not only about what sort of products you put on your skin, but also, the greater impacts of the production and disposal of those products. Organic soap is generally better for the environment, for animals, and for the local economy.

Learn more on Metaphor Organic Soap