Dr. Bronner's TEA TREE Pure-Castile Soap has
our most controversial label, as it includes Dr. Bronner's ecstatic love
poetry. When the Almond-Castile label is rhythmically recited while
bathing and breathing in the almond-scented steam-misted waters of the
inner bath-tub sanctum, people enter deep, dreamy, mystical trance
states of super-sensuous luxuriousness and consciousness, and emerge
from their bath as if from the Fountain of Life--reborn, renewed,
refreshed and ready to help unite the human race! All-One! All One!
Supermild
Castile has outstanding water softening and cleansing powers,
preferable to harsh soap & defattening synthetics. It does not cut
dirt, but dissolves it. It is the mildest, most pleasant soap you have
ever used.
Soap is made by saponifying a fat or oil with a strong alkali. A fat
or oil is a triglyceride, which means that three fatty acids of various
carbon lengths are attached to a glycerine backbone. The strong alkali
is either sodium (for bars) or potassium (for liquids) hydroxide. The
saponification process is a simple one-step reaction with no waste
generated: the glycerine is split off from the fatty acids, and the
fatty acids combine with the sodium or potassium to form soap, while the
hydroxide forms water. The result is soap, glycerin and water (no
alkali remains).
Quality soap-making consists in great part in choosing the right
proportions of the right oils with their different fatty acids. Most
commercial soaps skimp on quality because of cost, and use lots of
tallow from beef fat with a little bit of coconut or palm kernel oil.
Our unsurpassed soaps use olive, hemp, and palm oils instead of tallow,
and use three to four times more coconut oil than commercial soaps.
Saponified coconut oil generates high-lather cleansing even in hard
water because it has shorter-chain saturated fatty acids. Hemp, olive,
and palm based soaps make a mild, smooth, creamy lather, because these
oils contain longer chain unsaturated and polyunsaturated fatty acids.
Dr. Bronner's makes a higher quality soap in other ways as well.
Unlike most commercial soapmakers who distill the glycerin out of their
soaps to sell, we retain it in our soap for its superb moisturizing
qualities. We also superfat our soap with olive fatty acid, which both
ensures that there is no free alkali, and lowers the pH, making a
milder, smoother lather. We use rosemary extract and plant-derived
vitamin antioxidants to protect freshness (the rosemary is effective at
0.005%, so it contributes absolutely no scent). We do not add any
chelating agents, dyes, whiteners, or synthetic fragrances.
We use only 100% pure high quality essential oils. Our liquid soaps
are so concentrated that they are only a few percent away from being a
solid, which ecologically saves on packaging materials. They are a
superb value, costing less than less-concentrated inferior detergent
body-wash "liquid soaps." Our soaps are most popular for at-home
washing, but they also are the choice when camping and hiking, as our
soaps are so biodegradable and nature-friendly. Dr. Bronner's soaps have
spread by quality and word of mouth alone into virtually every health
food store in the country. Unsolicited articles raving about our soaps
have appeared in magazines and newspapers as diverse as Natural Health,
Outdoor Gear, Vogue, The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, The
Associated Press, The Wall Street Journal, Parenting and New Age.
