Soap-Making 101: To make soap, you must start with a fat - animal or vegetable (of course, we prefer vegetable), add a caustic agent (not an agnostic agent, although I've heard they do make nice soap). When a caustic is added to a fat, it creates heat, glycerin and soap in a process known as "saponification." Some soaps (like ours) leave all the moisturizing glycerin in, some precipitate the glycerin out and sell it on the industrial market. And that's the simple version of how soap is made.
Traditionally, the caustic used to make soap came from wood ashes (potassium carbonate) until the late 1700s when sodium hydroxide became the favored caustic of the soap-maker. Sodium hydroxide is commonly referred as 'lye.' An alternate caustic is potassium hydroxide (potash lye) - but potassium hydroxide
For most men, shaving is just something they do, probably before their minds are awake enough to consider the potential impact that their everyday habits have on either their health or the health of our planet.
A closer look, however, makes it clear that some choices are better than others. As a chemist specializing in developing ecofriendly products made with Neem, I'll avoid the controversy over wet shaving vs. electric razors, and focus on why soap is better than shaving cream.
First, take a look at the list of ingredients on your shaving cream. Water is almost always the top ingredient -- not a problem except for the environmental impact of shipping it across the country. Further down the list, you'll probably see chemicals like triethanolamine, associated with cancer, allergies and immune