Our soaps are 100% natural and that means using lye as has been the method for century’s. It’s a pivotal ingredient to the process.
In chemistry, soap is a salt of a fatty acid. Soaps for cleansing are created by mixing vegetable or animal oils and fats with a strongly alkaline solution. Fats and oils are composed of triglycerides; three molecules of fatty acids are attached to a single molecule of glycerol. The alkaline solution, which is often called lye (although the term "lye soap" refers almost exclusively to soaps made with sodium hydroxide), brings about a chemical reaction known as saponification. In this reaction, the triglyceride fats are first hydrolyzed into free fatty acids, and then these combine with the alkali to form crude soap, an amalgam of various soap salts, excess fat or alkali, water, and liberated glycerol (glycerin). The glycerin is a useful by-product, which can be left in the soap product as a softening agent, or isolated for other uses. Once the chemical reaction between the lye and the oils has taken place, there is no lye left in the finished product.