# Labeling soap as Natural or 100% Natural



## aab1 (Sep 16, 2013)

I have questions about labeling soap as either Natural or 100% Natural.

Firstly, can I label soap either Natural or 100% Natural even though it's made with lye which isn't natural?

Secondly, can I label soap either Natural or 100% Natural if I use oxides as coloring?

Lastly, can I label soap either Natural or 100% Natural if it contains blue ultramarine?

Thanks


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## paillo (Sep 16, 2013)

Oxides are synthetically manufactured, as is ultramarine. So no, you could not advertise them as natural, and certainly not 100 percent natural. 

Here's a helpful bit of info from a fun blog:  http://spottedhipposoap.blogspot.com/2010/09/are-micas-and-oxides-natural.html:

"So… are the iron oxides used to color cosmetics and soap mined from the earth, and are they as safe as any natural colorant?

No. Due to high levels of toxic contaminants such as arsenic, mercury, lead and selenium found in naturally occurring iron oxides, the iron oxides used in cosmetics and soap have been manufactured in labs since the 1970’s. The purpose of this was to make these colors safer by manufacturing a product with fewer toxins. As a result, iron oxides may contain fewer toxins, but they are certainly not natural."


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## sistrum (Sep 16, 2013)

Since there is no legal definition for "natural" as far as I know I suppose you could if you wanted to.  Many people do.  But in my case I don't.  Like you said the lye we use isn't natural nor are oxides or ultramarines and most the oils are so processed I really don't consider them natural either.  I even have a problem calling distilled water natural.  

I wish there were definite guidelines so when a person wanted to say "natural" or read "natural" everyone could be on the same page.


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## Crazy8 (Sep 16, 2013)

I feel that when people hear or see "natural" that they automatically think "oh that means its all made with just plants and junk". Well OK that might be what runs through my head but you get what I'm saying. I had seen a video where a lady was making soap in front of a class, and I think a student even asked if soap was all natural, and she said "well you cant have soap without lye, so no its not all natural." I mean if we REALLY were making a true all natural SAFE soap it would probably use natural colorants from roots, something natural to take the place of lye, probably no FO or EO, probably go as far as using ONLY organic plant oils, oh and water from a river, lake, or ocean. Id like to see how well that works...lol this would be a true hippy soap.

If you're OK with spending only 1/2 the cost on non-organic food, drink water that contains fluoride, and breath the air inside AND outside your house, then I guess I don't see what harm a little lye can do in a saop, which is far less than the chemicals used in soaps that you find on the shelf. Thats just me though.


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## judymoody (Sep 16, 2013)

I'm with sistrum.  Lye, oxides, and ultramarines are not natural.  Legally, you can claim your soap is natural as it lacks a clear definition.  But why make dubious claims in the first place?

Why not "hand-crafted" instead?


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## Crazy8 (Sep 16, 2013)

judymoody said:


> I'm with sistrum.  Lye, oxides, and ultramarines are not natural.  Legally, you can claim your soap is natural as it lacks a clear definition.  But why make dubious claims in the first place?
> 
> Why not "hand-crafted" instead?



I would also lean more towards the "hand-crafted" or even "homemade". Though I wonder if you could claim "made with natural oils", "natural exfoliants", or even "natural preservatives" assuming that all of these were in fact natural. Could even say that tallow is natural since it comes right from the animal and noting is added to it to make it tallow. man these kinds of things get weird...lol


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## DonnaC (Sep 16, 2013)

Such an interesting topic!  My view is this.  Soap doesn't grow on trees nor can you find it in the wild.  So as an industry, it would be a bit misleading to ever refer to soap as 100% natural.  Since ALL soap has been made with lye, and if we say lye were the disqualifier, there would be no such thing as the term 'natural soap'. But, since we know that there is no lye left in a bar of soap after it has saponified, then lye is no longer a factor.  So then, lye doesn't count.  I think oxides are a matter of opinion in that they come from nature, but must undergo processing to remove all the harmful bits. Essential oils would be natural as they are derived from natural sources (however, essential oils used improperly can be harmful). Fragrance oils are absolutely synthetic. Also, if something is not organic, can it be called natural?  Since it's possible that pesticides have come into contact with ingredients used in soap, then what?  And for those calling their products organic, how would this be verified? I'll stop now before I go way too off topic.


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## dagmar88 (Sep 16, 2013)

DonnaC said:


> Also, if something is not organic, can it be called natural?



You can call any b&b product you want natural. It's just an empty term and says nothing about the quality or formulation of the product.


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## TVivian (Sep 16, 2013)

I was looking at a popular soap makers site just this morning. They were advertising their soap as "vegan+organic" and I rolled my eyes a little.. 


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## FGOriold (Sep 16, 2013)

Seeing the word natural (or 100% natural) on anything manufactured in any way is one of my biggest pet peeves.  It means absolutely nothing as there are no legal guidelines for its use (unlike using the term organic) and it is just plain marketing.  Reading an ingredient list gives far more information about a product than the marketing terms used to sell it.


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## sistrum (Sep 16, 2013)

I don't agree with this website and how they determine things but here it is
http://naturalingredient.org/resources.htm



It seems the FDA does not consider mineral pigments natural but they also don't consider them to be "artificial ingredients" so according 
This website you can take their pledge and post their logo on your site and say your soaps are "natural" as long as they don't have
TO MUCH non natural ingredients in them?  IMO this is deceptive and misleading, but again, that's just me.


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## Crazy8 (Sep 16, 2013)

sistrum said:


> I don't agree with this website and how they determine things but here it is
> http://naturalingredient.org/resources.htm
> 
> 
> ...



So whats "TO MUCH"? More than 50% of the ingredients being unnatural. Is that when it becomes to much? lol Sometimes I think the FDA is just as confused about things as anyone else and it doesn't help when they make it more confusing and vague.


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## sistrum (Sep 16, 2013)

No,no,  not the FDA the other place.  They do say, I think it's 5 or 10% something like that.  I was just being lazy and didn't want to go back and check.  Lol


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## Paintguru (Sep 16, 2013)

I hate the terms "natural" and "100% natural", and avoid them both all together.


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## OliveOil2 (Sep 17, 2013)

I have a good one, a popular goat milk soap making company lists on their label 'natural fats', it took me a couple of seconds, and I thought oh they use either lard or tallow, and want it to have more label appeal. I went back to the site a week or so later and now it says saponified natural fats, and then listed the other vegetable fats. I know that only a soap maker would think this, but I thought  only your animal fats are saponified? I doubt that many of the visitors to that web site even think of natural fats as being animal, and many will not care, I just felt it was not being totally up front.


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## pamielynn (Sep 17, 2013)

For me, when I hear "natural", I think minimally processed, small batch, ingredients that I understand. I KNOW what olive oil is (I even understand what Olea europaea (olive) fruit oil is). Not just in soapmaking, but in baked goods, as well. If I see "natural meats", I think the same thing (grass fed, cared for, local animals).

Natural is 100% a marketing term and I believe most people look on it much in the way that I do. How many of you have run into that customer who not only wants "natural" soap, but also "organic" soap, but wants it to smell like apples and melons? LOL. They want to know their soapmaker and see ingredients they understand.

I don't like to see MP stated as natural because of all the alcohol, but the only thing that truly aggravates me is the organic claim. "Made with organic ingredients" works, but I've only run across one soapmaker that honestly backs up their claim of being 70% organic; the rest - well, they'll argue that since no lye is leftover, their soap is still organic. Bah. 

It's all perception -as is ALL marketing. You have to do what you feel is right, deep down inside. And be ready to be interrogated by another soapmaker at some point


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## shunt2011 (Sep 17, 2013)

All the oils are saponified by the lye except any superfat figured in to your recipe.  I agree with everyone else regarding the Natural vs 100% Natural.  I make soap, handcrafted beautiful soap, Period!!!


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## Twiggy (Sep 17, 2013)

Just few days ago I saw a documentary about natural/ bio cosmetics. One of the scientists from the cosmetic industry said that true natural cosmetic is when all the ingredients come from nature and can go back to nature without doing any harm to it. The lye we can produce from wood ashes but then it would be quite difficult to know the amount and right concentration of it. So that’s the question to chemists here, is the soap natural? Would it be harmless to environment when dumped to the ground or water? 

For me natural soap means without unnecessary synthetic component. NaOH is necessary tho… I consider my soaps as natural, but according to what I wrote above maybe I’m completely wrong!


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## Crazy8 (Sep 17, 2013)

Well in regards to the lye, the lye made from wood ash is KOH or Potassium Hydroxide and I believe even referred to as "potash". Not to be confused with NaOH which is Sodium Hydroxide. NaOH is not something that is naturally occurring based on my understanding. So based on this info, KOH being derived from water and wood ash, there is no reason that it couldn't return back to the earth. After all the only ingredients here is water and ash.


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## Twiggy (Sep 17, 2013)

Crazy8 said:


> Well in regards to the lye, the lye made from wood ash is KOH or Potassium Hydroxide and I believe even referred to as "potash". Not to be confused with NaOH which is Sodium Hydroxide. NaOH is not something that is naturally occurring based on my understanding. So based on this info, KOH being derived from water and wood ash, there is no reason that it couldn't return back to the earth. After all the only ingredients here is water and ash.


Thanks, I didn’t know that wood ash lay is KOH. Lesson learned! But even then, saponification will combine fats and NaOH or KOH, and produce an amalgam of various soap salts. Will that be natural?


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## Crazy8 (Sep 17, 2013)

Well I guess im in the mindset of what was mentioned earlier with "natural" being things made from the earth and able to return back to the earth. Saponification is a reaction when introducing the lye (KOH for instance) to the fats. Now if we take into account that all that fats are natural, the lye is natural and that there is 0 added chemicals, then what you have really is an all natural science experiment of saponification. The fact that you have saponification happening doesn't make it unnatural. At least to my very very very minimal scientific education. 

This is merely a hypothesis on my end. I do believe saponification is joining the fats together and thus creating the bar we call soap. Hopefully DeeAnna could step in here and clear some of this up. She has a much better more educated scientific background than I ever will. Science and I typically dont get a long well. Its kind of like "Hey if this is how soap is made, then that's all I care about, I don't care about whats happening on the atomic level or whats going on with molecules...lol"


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## Twiggy (Sep 17, 2013)

So welcome in my world! LOL Actually I’m interested, but little too lazy to investigate every single thing – big shame on my, but it is like it is…
BTW, I use only herbs and clays to color, and EO to scent. Even tho, EO are very aggressive fellows! On each safety data sheet of EO you can read warning, that they are actually poison for the water creatures and plants and they should not be poured to canalization…Probably in big quantity.


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## Crazy8 (Sep 17, 2013)

Thats kind of odd that EO's could be poison because I thought EO's were made basically by steaming or maybe even extracting the essence or its properties from that particular plant, fruit, roots, etc. I had read because of this that EO's were "natural" because of the process in which the oils from the plants are collected but that FO's are completely lab created and not natural. On a similar note, I had seen on a show how a fragrance is made from ANYTHING and its quite impressive and disturbing. This took place in a lab that specializes in making scents. For instance they took a dirty diaper and placed it in this machine that kind of "sniffs" the odor and then turns that data into what fragrances to mix with what and the amounts. Based on the show hosts reaction to sniffing the final product, they nailed it...lol But I imagine this is how FO's are made everywhere. Then just brought onto a bigger scale on a factory floor to turn it into a usable product.


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## dagmar88 (Sep 17, 2013)

Coke and heroin are natural plant extracted substances. Natural is often mistaken for safe.
Fragrance oils can contain essential oils.


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## Twiggy (Sep 17, 2013)

I'm with you Dagmar, natural doesn't mean safe, but is very interesting discussion anyway. I still wonder if our soaps are truly natural after all.


Crazy8 said:


> Thats kind of odd that EO's could be poison because I thought EO's were made basically by steaming or maybe even extracting the essence or its properties from that particular plant, fruit, roots, etc. I had read because of this that EO's were "natural" because of the process in which the oils from the plants are collected but that FO's are completely lab created and not natural.


Yes it is odd, I cannot explain it, but I think anything in a great concentration will be dangerous one way or another…


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## Crazy8 (Sep 17, 2013)

Twiggy said:


> I'm with you Dagmar, natural doesn't mean safe, but is very interesting discussion anyway. I still wonder if our soaps are truly natural after all.
> 
> Yes it is odd, I cannot explain it, but I think anything in a great concentration will be dangerous one way or another…



Very true. I also agree that natural does not mean safe I mean poison dart frogs appear in nature, but not exactly safe:mrgreen: Or something closer to home in regards to plants, poison ivy, and again not safe. Well to an extent anyway. But yes very interesting conversation and I would say worth addressing. There are many "green" people out there looking to live their lives off of "natural" ,"organic", and all that stuff and I think they sometimes place to much security in those words. If I grow it in my garden, I know what did and didn't go into it. Not to mention I don't have to pay 2-3 times as much for it saying "organic" but that's just me. 

I think to kinda get back on track with the OP inquiry I would just say play it safe and dont worry about putting "natural" on the package. Sure people like to see that and it feels good to have that on their, but in the big scheme of things some would argue that it is and others would argue that its not, and you have the FDA stuff to consider. So it may prevent you from a huge headach and maybe even lawsuits. Who knows. So I would stick with things like "mad with love" or "hand made" things like that.


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## Twiggy (Sep 17, 2013)

Crazy8 said:


> So I would stick with things like "mad with love" or "hand made" things like that.



I like that idea! Made with love!


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## normasbathandbody (Oct 4, 2013)

Great post everyone..


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## EveKerr (Oct 4, 2013)

Prefect analysis  


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