Soap. It’s good for us, right? So why does it sting our eyes? Most soaps contain chemicals that are far from good for us. They sting our eyes because they contain irritating ingredients added to make them more easy to sell. Ingredients such as Sodium Lauryl Sulphate (also see this article) that help produce suds but do nothing to improve its action as a soap. Luckily, there are plenty of natural alternatives around and, on a recent trip to the USA, I was surprised to find some particularly lovely, natural soaps.
Soap was one of the things I talked about in the post Detoxification Through Natural Personal Care Products – Step 3 where I described how conventional soaps can contain numerous unnatural and nasty chemicals. Even the soaps marketed as gentle, like “Dove”, can contain nasty chemicals. In this post I discussed how it’s not too hard to find natural alternatives that avoid the nasty chemicals.
The unnatural chemicals are added because it helps the manufacturer cheaply produce a product that you’ll be more likely to buy. The chemicals help make the soap foam, make it look a nice color, make it have a supposedly pleasing aroma and help make sure the product lasts a long time on the shelves. None of these are because the soap will be good for you. Actually the fact that the soap is unkind to our bodies doesn’t really matter to the conventional companies that manufacture and sell soap. All that seems to matter is “can it be made cheaply?” and “can we attract people to want to buy it?”.
Finding natural soaps in a U.S. hotel room!
Recently I visited the U.S. for an industry workshop and I was surprised by the soap provided in the bathroom. These days I’m accustomed to taking my own natural soaps with me on business trips, but this time the soap provided by the hotel was, surprisingly, perfectly natural.
The hotel was the Cliff Lodge in Snowbird, Utah, and this image shows the back of the box that the soap came in;
That’s great for a hotel to provide! I didn’t need to use the natural soaps that I’d taken with me.
Finding Goat Milk Soap in Utah
The next surprise was in the small store in the same hotel. They were selling some locally made soaps from a company called Simply Eden in Utah. I just had to buy one of their Goats Milk Soaps (with grapefruit and peppermint), just because it looked and sounded good. When I got back home and tried it out I wasn’t disappointed. It was absolutely lovely to use.
Having a look at the website from Simply Eden, it seems like a great company. I like this quote from their “About Us” page;
Simply Eden Bath & Body was started because I realized the so-called “soap” that I was using was actually a harsh chemical detergent that was irritating my sensitive skin. I decided that I needed to go back to the basics with my skin and back to the way soap was meant to be.
Plus they are 100% transparent about all the ingredients and additives.
I really like buying products where I know the story behind their production. With Simply Eden, I feel like I know the story behind the soap and, even better, I like that story.
Another good find in North America
Last year I just happened to find natural soaps from the Rocky Mountain Soap Company – see this page. That appears to be another nice company, trying to do good things for its customers while making a deserved profit at the same time.
I’m really pleased to see that there are many companies springing up that provide products that are good for us, the consumer. I like to buy from companies that have the good of the consumer in mind and I’d rather avoid the big brands with their incessant, shallow advertising of products with dubious ingredients and heritage.
Have you found any lovely, natural soaps? Any recommendations?
Have I said anything that is incorrect?
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