bad hippies becomes a reality...
Many moons ago Mark and I talked about all the junk we consume both internally and externally.
Yuck.
Think about any average American on any given day and think about the amount of crap we consume every single day.
From fast or pre-made processed food to the shaving lotion, shampoos, conditioners, soaps, styling products, not to mention the crap we wash and dry our clothes in and then put them on our largest organs (our skin people...our skin).
Oh and then we started to think about what happens when you wash all the stuff down the drain...where does it go? How do we get rid of it? Is it doing harm to our beautiful Mother Earth?
So, we did some digging and it wasn't pretty. In fact it got downright ugly. We decided to make a change.
A change for us in our tiny corner of the world. We made an intentional decision to reduce our carbon footprint. Did we go all militant about chemicals? Nope, but we did make some small and easy changes (that every single person can do without really noticing) to make our lives a little less harmful to the world at large.
So what does all of this mean?
Here is the story of our tiny company and how we can to be.
bad hippies...a brief history
As I explained above Mark and I wanted to get rid of some of the nasties in our lives like sulfites and sulfates and sulfra-all-the-things. So we looked up how to make laundry soap and we were taking our first steps into all things hippies.
Off to the store to buy Super Washing Soda and Borax and fels naptha soap. A few bloody knuckles from grating soap later we were in business.
But wait...what is in fels naptha?
Sodium tallowate.
What is sodium tallowate?
According to howstuffworks.com:
Sodium tallowate is a true soap made by combining the fatty tissue (or tallow) of animals, such as cattle and sheep, with lye, typically sodium hydroxide [source: Cavitch].
Yep, you read that right.
From the Merriam Webster Dictionary Website:
Definition of tallow
: the white nearly tasteless solid rendered fat of cattle and sheep used chiefly in soap, candles, and lubricants
Tallow is made from animal fat and as a veg head I was not so down with that.
So, what are our options? Enter castile soap for the win!
There are many amazing castile soaps out there and we were happy to use them...for a while. Then one day we thought - hmmmmm- how hard could it possibly be to make our own castile soap?
That is our story and I am sticking to it!
Now we are soapers.
Fast forward a few years and now we have a mess of soap scents and when we make soap we save and use the bits left over to make our laundry detergent. It is the ultimate in recycling. It makes your clothes happy and it makes your skin happy too! Oh and no crap heading into the water system and it makes the world a little less full of the sulfra-all-the-things!
We are also dabbling into making laundry pod type thingies, but we aren't quite sure how to best package these bad boys in an efficient and eco-friendly and cost effective way, but super cute way.
Are you curious about our products? Got questions?
Ask away!!!
Share with us how you are helping make the world suck a little less...