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Microbeads are tiny plastic beads used in many commercial personal care products like toothpaste and body washes made in the UK. They add a gentle exfoliant to skin care products and a bit of a harsher scrub to toothpastes.The problem with microbeads (already banned in the USA) is that they don't decompose. Instead, they get flushed through sewage treatment plants and into oceans where small fish mistake the indigestible beads for food, adding to plastic pollution.(C&L Soaps does not use mic …

You know it cleans, but how does it do that? Soap is made of chain-like molecules with one end (the polar “head”) attracted to water, and the other end (the hydrocarbon “tail”) attracted to oil.When you soap up your hands the oil-attracted end sticks to the oils in your skin, and the water-attracted end sort of waves up into the water. When you scrub your hands, the soap molecules rearrange themselves into little droplets (micelles) with the water-loving heads on the outside of the droplet …

We soapmakers are kind of like alchemists. We combine base oils and react them to form something more valuable. It’s not quite gold from lead, but it’s similar.We use a wide variety of oils, depending on the qualities we want in our finished product. Here’s a list of some of our common oils with the properties they give to soaps. Avocado Oil Contains vitamins E, D, and A, making the soap healing and moisturizing. Canola Oil Makes a stable lathering soap, conditioning, …

Handmade soap is usually more expensive than store-bought soap, so it needs to be better than store-bought – enough to make it worth the higher price. This means we have to use higher quality, more expensive ingredients, slower, more costly processes, and pay very close attention to quality control. Our reputations and our livelihoods depend on it!The ingredients used in making high quality soaps are expensive. The base oils are expensive, and so are the rare essential oils that give …

You may have heard about African Black Soap (ABS). It’s a dark brown, usually mottled bar of soap, and sometimes it is quite soft. It originated in West Africa – Ghana, Nigeria and Cote D’Ivoire, and it is GREAT for your skin!The main oils used in ABS are coconut oil and at least 45% shea butter. Both are fantastic for your skin. ABS is a good treatment for dry and irritated skin. It is antibacterial, and had been used to treat psoriasis, eczema, dermatitis and acne.It is said to b …

It was TERRIBLE soap – harsh, soft, and stinky. Pioneers made it out of wood ashes and animal fat and used it to clean just about everything.To make it, you first have to leech potassium hydroxide (a kind of lye) from wood ashes. Fill up a wooden bucket with ashes from your fireplace. Drill a very small hole in the bottom side of the bucket and put a stopper in it. Mount the bucket over a non-metallic or enameled bowl.Pour boiling rain water into the ashes and pull out the stopper. T …

Traditionally, Castile soap is hard bar soap made only from olive oil and lye in the Castile region of Spain. It has a pure white color that gets whiter with age, and has wonderful properties including a long lasting fluffy lather and a hardness that makes the bars last a long time. It’s also considered to be very good for skin, and it’s one of the least environmentally polluting.The “original” olive oil soap was Aleppo soap, made in Aleppo, Syria and exported along the Silk Road and …

In Aleppo, Syria, they’ve been making huge amounts of a very special soap for more than four thousand years.Traditional Aleppo soap was a pure castile soap made with olive oil and lye in a hot process. Laurel oil was added for its antiseptic and antibacterial properties. Then the soap was allowed to harden, after which it was cut into traditional cube-like blocks, stamped with the imprint of the soapmaker, and stacked underground to cure for a very long six to nine months. The unusua …

Soapmakers are often asked about the difference between handmade soap and store-bought soap. There are many differences. First and foremost, most commercial store-bought soap isn’t soap at all. It’s a detergent made out of chemical hardeners, artificial scents, and chemical foaming agents.It may be labeled “natural” and come with all kinds of persuasive advertising claiming all sorts of wonderful benefits, but read the ingredients label for more info.Handmade soap is pure soap, in …

If it’s soap, it was made with lye. All soap is made with lye.There’s a difference between a “soap” and a “detergent.” Many common store-bought soaps aren’t “soap” at all, rather, they are detergents made with chemical hardeners, surfactants, and foaming agents, and perhaps no lye at all. I’m talking about real soap here, and all of it is made with lye.Many people think goat’s milk soap is made without lye, but that’s not true. Even goat’s milk soap is made with lye, the same amount of …