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We find these articles by the thousands if not millions all over the internet, not mentioning each one usually provides at least 1 recipe to try at home. Many of these recipes are quite effective, but how about how much money you really save?
The idea to make your own lotions and bath products is so that you could truly know what you put in them while saving tons of money since the best ones (the truly best ones, not the ones made in a lab with thousands of poisons ones, I’m talking about the real natural & organic ones) cost quite a lot, but are we really saving that much by making them ourselves?
Unless you already use all organic ingredients in your kitchen from olive oil all the way to pumpkin oil, spices, botanicals, essential oils, extracts, etc. you will soon find out that buying even the smallest bottle of high quality natural & organic ingredients (not the fake synthetic stuff, the real stuff) costs a load of money. All the ingredients we use at By Valenti are quite expensive as we only buy high quality certified organic oils, botanicals and essential oils. 1/2 oz of Bulgarian Rose Essential Oil costs $359, a bottle of Certified Organic Pumpkin Oil can cost $20 and from that you might only use 2-5ml of oil and 2 drops of Rose EO into your formulation, so unless you have it around your kitchen already, buying all these expensive ingredients we regularly use in our formulations soon add up. In the end you will spend much, much more than buying that great organic serum you so much love, know is absolutely natural and does wonders to your skin for $35.
Many other articles we found talk about buying or using fragrances and cheap or artificial ingredients to make your own products at home, but are you sure you want to keep poisoning your body even further?… the main scope of Organic & Natural cosmetics and bath products is so you won’t keep adding more harmful chemicals to your body potentially harming yourself while increasing your risks for cancer and other awful diseases which are on the rise do to the lack of integrity of the giant cosmetic companies and the lack of regulations by the FDA.
The are many responsible Organic Skin Care brands that are making a difference in this so corrupted industry aside from By Valenti, whom are only using Organic Certified Ingredients and are completely avoiding the use of artificial ingredients, petrochemicals, GMOs, sulfates, phthalates, and many other extremely harmful components.
So next time you read those articles on how to make your own organic products at home, do the math, you might not be saving that much money after all.
There are a number of companies making fabulous skin products with minimalistic or inexistent packaging readily available for the mases to buy at malls and department stores. For many this is a way to “save the planet” from garbage, but is it really that simple? could we be harming ourselves more than we think?
Studies have shown transfered bacteria is even more dangerous than we think and can cause a pandemic in days. Not in vain it’s said the most disgusting thing to touch is the handle of a supermarket cart, wouldn’t you agree?
Our hands normally have thousands if not millions of bacteria on a daily basis depending on many factors. Let’s face it we are a walking hotel filled with bacteria and viruses and we are spreading it everywhere we go whenever we come in contact with something. Many sneeze and wipe their noses with their hands and forget to wash them, others handle money (another source of millions of viruses) and forget to wash their hands afterwards. Whatever the cause we transfer those viruses on everything we touch. Now imagine the same hands touching that supermarket cart, the money or wiping a nose on top of your fabulously scented bath-bomb, soap or bath salt… pretty gruesome huh?
Transfered bacteria, depending on the surface it’s attached to can multiply in seconds. An unwrapped soap or bath-bomb is a perfect environment for bacteria and viruses to grow, and you’re more likely to take that product filled with thousands of viruses with you home and use it in the next few days.
Although I couldn’t agree more we have a serious problem with garbage, we also have a serious problem with viruses and bacteria and for the consumer the solution might be very simple. Many companies, By Valenti included, have attacked the problem of garbage produced by cosmetics and bath products in a more ecologically conscious way without stripping the products of protection. We look outside the box looking for more eco-friendly alternatives to packaging, and include in our packaging designs biodegradable, reusable or recyclable materials to solve a problem. Many go the extra mile and offer a refund for every empty container the consumer returns to them.
We understand what transfered bacteria does and that’s the reason we wrap our products to avoid contamination. We take the necessary precautions while manufacturing our products to provide our clients of a sterile soap and bath bomb, so it wouldn’t make any sense to leave them unprotected for transfered bacteria to freely grow on them on a department store, not mention dust particles settle on top of the product along with the oxidation the product would regularly go through when exposed to the air lowering the quality of the product by the time you get to use it in your body.
So next time you shop for a product at a department store that is not properly wrapped, avoid it all together, because if the company doesn’t care about protecting their products while providing you the consumer with a bacteria free product, what makes you think they take the necessary sterile measures to make it?
For years we have been wasteful. We’ve filled our landfills with an incredible amount of garbage that might never decompose. Toxic materials are released in our water-streams that should have never been produced in first place. But how do we change the faith of our beautiful planet?
Simply by taking action and green your house.
Other countries have done it for years, but Americans are way behind in this task and it’s time for a change, a big one!
To GREEN your house start with your bathroom!
- Use water sparingly! Our rivers are drying out and that’s because we waste too much water on everything around the house, especially in our bathrooms! shorten your showers and reuse the water from your bathtub to water your plants.
- Avoid using plastic containers and if you must try to buy refills instead.
- Have a few trash bins in your bathroom to recycle your bathroom disposables into metals, plastics and papers just like you do in your kitchen.
- Try to avoid brightly colored products as artificial colorants are made with petroleum and products containing tons of chemicals and switch to more natural eco-friendly bath & body products. Both our rivers and your skin will benefit from it!
- Avoid liquid products and switch to solid ones, chances are these are packed in more eco-friendly packaging instead of plastic.
- Prefer products in glass and metal containers over plastic as these can be recycled more easily and with less toxic waste.
If we all do our part we would all benefit from it and our kids will be able to enjoy a better healthier future.
This is one of the keywords that is recorded a lot in our stats lately. Apparently someone somewhere must be making and selling soaps with a really bad formula for this to be going around, so we want to clear this myth out a little, but for this you need to more or less understand how soap is made.
Soap basically is made using two different process Cold or Hot. Although different they are basically the same except for one step. An alkaline substance (Sodium Hydroxide, commonly known as Lye (NaOH) or Potassium Hydroxide (KOH)) is mixed with an oil or fat and produces soap. Sounds simple huh? not quite. Not every oil is suitable to lather richly like many would think. Every oil has different properties that are transferred to the soap during the saponification process. Knowing what oil does what and in what proportions each oil should be used is the huge difference between a good or a bad soap. Balancing a soap formula is science and not as simple as it looks, the reason why there are so many bad and really bad homemade or handmade soaps going around lately.
There is no difference between an organic oil between a non organic oil aside from the fact one has contaminants and probably pesticides and the other doesn’t, so the fact the soap is made with organic oils has no effect in the resulting soap if the formula is balanced and high quality oils are used. If the formula is poor and unbalanced even if organic oils are used, the soap is of bad quality and might not lather properly among other bad qualities.
For example, the original Castile soap is made with 100% Extra Virgin Olive Oil, no other oils are added to the formula. The resulting soap is a gentle soap that lathers fabulously (despite what many have reported on the internet) and that is mild enough to be used even on newborns. If this soap were made with Organic Extra Virgin Olive Oil instead of the non organic one, nothing would change in the properties of the soap, as both oils, the organic and non organic, have the same exact properties. But if instead pomace, (another olive oil derived from the pit of the olive instead of the flesh), is used the resulting soap would be quite different and not as good as the one made with EVOO (organic or not) because the properties of the oil are substantially different.
Another thing that can affect the lather of a soap believe it or not, is the water that comes out of your faucet. If the water in your area is soft, more lather would come out of the soap, if the water is hard even on a soap that is known to lather a lot, the lather would not be as strong as it should.
So next time you to come across an organic soap that doesn’t lather as you expected, don’t blame its organic ingredients, instead check to see if the water in your area is soft or hard as this can affect a lot the performance of the soap. If the soap still doesn’t lather as it should, then look for another brand, as it’s obvious you came across a bad unbalanced soap.
If you shop for “soap” at your grocery store or department store you will notice none of the commercial soaps you will find have the written word “Soap” on the label or packaging. This is because by law a soap that is not truly a “soap” can’t use the word SOAP in the label.
That begs the question, if the soaps that you’ve been buying at your supermarket and using for years are not technically soaps, then what are they?… well, one thing is for sure, they are not TRUE SOAPS!
Commercial soaps like Oil of Olay, Dove, Palmolive and even shower gels, are considered “fake soaps” or “synthetic soaps” since in reality they are “detergents”. The cocktail of chemicals they contain, the way they are manufactured and the ingredients used prohibit them to be called true soap and use the word “soap” on their packaging. Even further, many of the commercial soaps contain chemicals that are responsible for many skin cancer types (and you thought the sun was the only responsible huh?). So according to the FDA they are regulated as cosmetics or drugs.
These “detergent bars” are often called moisturizing bar, softsoap, beauty bar, deodorant soap and similar names, but never plain “soap”. According to the FDA, soaps are produced from natural ingredients while detergents are produced using synthetic ingredients. In other words, all that lathers is not considered soap.
Next time you shop for “soap” for your family check the ingredients, you might be surprise to know that you won’t end up as clean as you thought after using it.
