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[ Ethyl Chloride USP ] [ Dr.Bronner's Castile Soap ] Note: Not all products mentioned in this article are available from Chase-Union, Ltd.
A Letter from the Good Doctor's Family
Dr. Bronner's life is summed up with the words on his gravestone: A Life Dedicated To God, Mankind & Spaceship Earth. He spent his entire adult life searching for God and Full Truth in not only the sacred books of the religions of the world, but also in the inspired words of people from all walks of life, past and present. He would translate these words through his own idiosyncratic and unique genius onto the labels of his wonderful soaps. Dr. Bronner saw the soap as a messenger for his vision of universal Full-Truth: The Moral ABC. No one agrees with everything on the label, but everyone finds something which inspires and touches them. Although we are not a religion, we revere Dr. Bronner for his tremendous efforts to unite Spaceship Earth in a deep spiritual love and respect for God, Earth and each other.
Dr. Bronner was one of the original environmentally conscious individuals of the twentieth century. The labels of his unsurpassed pure-castile soaps became the perfect medium for his vision of global unity and peace. He is the passionate soul speaking through the labels about respect, reverence, and love of our fellow beings, of the Earth and of God. Not only exhorting others to unify humanity and Spaceship Earth, he devoted his own time, money and energy to numerous worthy social and ecological projects. Dr. Bronner's spirituality was grounded in a profound ecological and universal consciousness, and our soaps are an extension of his being: simple, natural, powerful and 100% environment-friendly.
Our family's soap-making roots originated in the mid-19th century in Heilbronn, Germany, where the family soap factory was located. Dr. Bronner, a third-generation master soap maker, came to America in the late 1920's. Dr. Bronner passed away peacefully on March 7, 1997, amidst family and friends. We pledge to continue to responsibly produce the fine ecological soaps you have loved and lathered with for 50 years, while sharing our profits with our workers and worthwhile causes worldwide.
Love in All-One, The Bronner Family
The Products
Chase Union stocks Dr. Bronner's Pure-Castile Soaps in 8 oz bottles.
Dr. Bronner's PEPPERMINT Pure-Castile Soap is our most popular variety. The peppermint essential oil creates an exhilarating chilly-tingly-cool body space. Because therapeutically peppermint oil is a mild stimulant, it increases vitality and clarity, enabling constructive-selfish Peppermint-Castile users to work hard and get done! Then sing-dance-play until we're All-One! Naturally, morning peppermint power showers lead to a fulfilling life of service and fun! Exceptions Eternally? Absolute None!
Dr. Bronner's ALMOND 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-mist 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 hi unite the human race! All-One! All One!!
Dr. Bronner's EUCALYPTUS Pure-Castile Soap generates an intense and invigorating showering space. Inhaling the shower-steamed Eucalyptus is a powerful way to dissolve sluggishness and sloth of spirit. Many people also use this soap as their favorite pet wash.
Dr. Bronner's TEA TREE Pure-Castile Soap is our phenomenal new soap for the millennium. The therapeutic benefits of Tea Tree Oil can now be reaped in our unsurpassed pure-castile base. Use for facial cleansing and cleaning minor cuts and scrapes, as well as everyday bathing.
Dr. Bronner's LAVENDER Pure-Castile Soap contains both Lavandin & Lavender essential oils to create a soothing and harmonizing bathing experience for the body and mind. Like long serene sunsets over still calm waters, Lavender-Castile showers replenish and recharge the soul.
Dr. Bronner's ALOE VERA BABY MILD Pure-Castile Soap is formulated to be a mild smooth soap for use on newborns (but still make sure to keep it out of the eyes. Because the Baby-Mild contains no essential oils, imaginative grown-up babies can add their own favorites to craft personally unique bathing spaces (the Rosemary Extract is effective as an anti-oxidant in our soap at 0.005%, so contributes absolutely no scent).
How Our Soaps are Made
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 glycerin 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 glycerin 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 soap makers who distill the glycerin out of their soaps to sell, we retain it in our soap for its superb moisturizing qualities. We also super-fat 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. Go to our website, http://www.drbronner.com, for more information on the company, the family, the founder and his message, and the worthwhile causes that we support.
Pure Castile Ingredients
LIQUID: Water, Saponified Coconut-Olive Oils (with retained Glycerin), Olive Fatty Acids, Bitter Almond Oil (or) Aloe Vera (or) Eucalyptus (or) Lavandin & Lavender Oils (or) Peppermint Oil (or) Tee Tree Oil, Rosemary Extract
BAR: Saponified Coconut & Palm Oils (with retained Glycerin), Water, Olive Fatty Acids, Hemp Oil, Bitter Almond Oil (or) Aloe Vera (or) Eucalyptus (or) Lavandin & Lavender Oils (or) Lemon Rose Fragrance (or) Peppermint Oil (or) Tee Tree Oil, Rosemary Extract, Vitamin C, Vitamin E
Frequently Asked Questions
What does "Castile" mean? Is the bar soap also a castile soap like the liquid? What is the difference between the bar and liquid soaps?
In earlier centuries, an all-vegetable based soap was made in the Castile region of Spain from local olive oil. By the turn of the twentith century, "Castile" had come to mean any vegetable oil-based soap, versus animal (tallow) fat-based. "Pure-Castile" is now also your guarantee that what you are consuming is a real ecological simple soap, not a complex blend of detergents with a higher impact on the Earth due to the waste stream during manufacture and slower biodegradability. Unfortunately, many synthetic detergent blends are deceptively labeled as "Liquid Soap."
Both our bar and liquid soaps are pure-Castile, as they are all vegetable oil based. The new bar soap wrapper prominently states that it, too, is pure-castile, like our liquid. The difference between the liquid and bar is that the liquid soap uses potassium hydroxide to saponify the vegetable oils, versus the sodium hydroxide used to make the hard bar soap.
Does the Rosemary Extract contribute any scent to the soap?
No. The Rosemary Extract is effective as an antioxidant in our soap at 0.005%. It contributes absolutely no scent, even in the unscented Aloe Vera Baby-Mild soap.
How should I dilute the liquid soap?
For everyday body-washing: Get wet and pour drops of soap full-strength onto hands-washcloth-loofah. Lather up, scrub down, rinse off, and tingle fresh and clean. For other uses, dilute from one part soap into 40 parts water for light cleaning, to cutting it in half or using it full strength for heavy-duty grease-cutting jobs.
My liquid soap turned cloudy. What happened, and what should I do to clear it up again?
Our liquid soaps are so concentrated that they are nearly solid. Thus, when the temperature drops to about 50 degrees F, the fatty acids begin to cloud out. Put the soap in a warm room, or warm water, and it will clear up about 70 degrees F. Clear or cloudy, the soap works just the same.
What is "potassium solution"?
Dr. Bronner used to list the ingredients as they exist before the saponification reaction turns the vegetable oils into soap. "Potassium solution" refers to the alkali in water, potassium hydroxide, that is used to saponify the whole coconut and olive oils to make the pure-Castile soap base. We now list the ingredients as "Saponified Coconut-Hemp-Olive Oils (with retained glycerin)," which are the soaps (and naturally liberated glycerin) resulting from the reaction of these oils with the alkaline "potassium solution."
What is the difference between a "fixed" and an "essential" oil?
The oils used for saponification are "fixed," while oils used for fragrance are "essential." They are quite different in structure and function. Fixed oils are bland non-volatile triglycerides, with relatively faint odor and taste, like cooking oils. Essential oils by comparison are super aromatic, composed of highly volatile compounds of certain plants.
Do your soaps contain any foaming agents/detergents like Sodium Lauryl Sulfate?
Absolutely not. Our soap is a 100% true pure-Castile soap. The high foaming lather of our soap is from the high coconut soap content, which makes a more luxurious and rich lather than any detergent can ever create. "Pure-Castile" is your guarantee that what you are using is a real ecological simple soap, not a complex blend of detergents with a higher ecological impact due to waste stream during manufacture and slower ultimate biodegradability. Unfortunately, many synthetic detergent blends are deceptively labeled as "Liquid Soap," when they contain absolutely no soap whatsoever.
What is the difference between a soap and a detergent/surfactant?
A soap is a very simple, low impact cleaning agent that improves water's ability to clean particulate and oily soils. It is made in a one-step process, with no waste products, and quickly & completely biodegrades.
A surfactant is the same as a detergent. The word itself is a compression of "Surface Active Agent." Surfactants were developed in the first place because they clean and rinse better than soap in hard water. They usually are much more aggressive cleaners. Their virtue lies in all-purpose, industrial, and specialty cleaning applications. Unfortunately, they are often used in personal body washes, for which soap is superior.
The synthetic manufacture of many surfactants, especially those built from petroleum, generates undesirable waste. Surfactants also do not biodegrade as rapidly as does soap. However, within detergents, there is a wide range in both effectiveness and ecological impact. Renewable resource plant-based detergents usually have less ecological impact than those that are petroleum-based.
Dr. Bronner's Sal Suds is a blend of plant-based surfactants for all-purpose cleaning applications, and is a stronger cleaner than soap. It is not for body washing, although it uses ingredients found in detergent-based body washes.
Dr. Bronner's SAL SUDS is our hard-surface all-purpose cleaner. It is a balanced formulation of plant-based surfactants with natural spruce and fir-needle oils. It cleans and rinses with exceptional power, yet is gentle on the skin. Sal Suds is equally effective in hard or soft water, rinsing freely, hot or cold. It is 100% cruelty-free: no animal testing. Suds will biodegrade rapidly after it has done its job.
Socially Responsible Activities
Serving Our Community No Animal Testing and Spaceship Earth
Dr. Bronner's spends at least 10% of its profits each year on many worthwhile causes and organizations. We have sponsored wells in Ghana, orphanages in China, and many other motivated groups and people doing amazing things. Our wonderful workers are compensated well and receive great benefits and bonuses; we also fully fund their California maximum 15% profit-sharing plan.
In 1998, just before Jim Bronner passed away (Dr. Bronner's son, master chemist and President of the company for 5 years), we gave away Dr. Bronner's beloved rain-forest, a land grant of over 1000 acres, to the Boys & Girls Club of San Diego County, California. Underprivileged children can now camp under the stars with in sight of Mt. Palomar which is often mentioned in the Moral ABC.
No Animal Testing
Dr. Bronner's qualifies for the rabbit and stars logo of the Coalition for Consumer information on Cosmetics (CCIC). This logo certifies that our product and all of our ingredients are not tested on animals. The CCIC, a coalition of animal rights organizations, requires independent audit for confirmation.
Many people have no idea how extensive animal testing is in the cosmetic industry. These tests are extremely painful, usually resulting in death, and are almost always unnecessary. Almost all ingredients have been tested on animals at some point in the past, and there is extensive safety information available through literature searches. Even if testing should be necessary, there are many tests available to establish product safety that do not involve animals. To continue testing on animals for the sake of human vanity when we already have many safe, established ingredients and formulations is inhumane.
Hemp, the Wonder Oil, and the Solution to Our Woodwise Pledge
Hemp oil improves our soaps because it contains such a high proportion of polyunsaturated fatty acids, which make our soap more mild and less drying than ever. Hemp has a remarkable number of beneficial uses for the whole Earth, and we support its use in agriculture, manufacturing and trade.
Dr. Bronner's has signed the Co-op America Woodwise Pledge to be socially responsible through diminishing our consumption of forest tree-based materials and products. In the spirit of this pledge, our bar soap paper label and inner liner are now a 25% hemp / 75% post-consumer recycled blend. Our official letterhead is printed on this same paper. All office paper is made from 100% post-consumer recycled paper. We now also silk-screen our cylinder bottles (50% post-consumer recycled plastic) in place of the million-plus paper labels we had used per year.
