Organic. Vegan. Eco-friendly. All-Natural. Superfood. There are lots of buzzwords advertisers use to describe their products, and often times their claims aren’t as pure and wholesome as they seem.
Instead of blasting you with buzzwords to try to persuade you to buy our handmade soaps, we decided to explain exactly what it means when we state a soap is vegan or all natural, and why they have received that designation.
People often assume that vegan and all natural mean the same thing. After all, they both sound like they are good for you. However, there are major differences between a soap being a vegan soap or an all natural soap.
Vegan soap is soap that uses and contains no animal products whatsoever. While historically soap was made with animal tallow or fat, advances in technology and knowledge have allowed us to utilize plant oils as the base for soap instead of animal products.
When we identify a product as vegan soap, it means that there are no animal products used whatsoever. This includes the base, additives, colorant, fragrance, decorations, etc. If we are not 100% positive that a soap is vegan, we do not designate it as a vegan soap. For example: we are unable to obtain lists of some of the ingredients in some of our beer soaps. While the beer may be vegan, we will not identify that beer soap as a vegan soap unless we have confirmation from the brewery. We would rather err on the side of caution than unintentionally label a soap as vegan soap when it is not.
Unfortunately there are no industry standards or requirements when using the term all natural, we choose to hold ourselves and our products to a higher standard. We define all natural soaps as soaps that use no artificial ingredients.
When we identify a product as an all-natural soap, it means that there are no artificial ingredients used. This means that our all-natural soaps are made from an organic base, scented with essential oils, and colored through organic means such as plant extracts or naturally occurring colored clay. If we are not 100% positive that a soap is all natural, we will not identify it as an all-natural soap. Our goal is always to be open and honest about the ingredients and methods we use to product our artisanal soap, and we would rather err on the side of caution when identifying our soaps instead of making false claims.
Looking through our website, you may notice that some of our soaps are vegan but not all natural, some of our soaps are all natural but not vegan, and some of our soaps are both vegan and all-natural. These terms are not mutually exclusive. For example, honey is all natural, but it is not vegan, the fragrance oils we use are vegan but not all natural, and essential oils are both vegan and all natural.