When you buy a Hyssop Tree soap, you impact someone's life. But did you know you also impact the Earth? April 22, 2018 is Earth Day. In honor of Earth Day, we'd like to celebrate all the ways you impact our Earth when you buy one of our soaps.
You might have noticed that our soaps are all hand-wrapped. Our white wrapping paper is made from 90% recycled fibers made right here in the USA and purchased from a local company. We chose paper so it would break down in the trash or recycling and leave a minimal impact on the earth.
Our liquid soap and laundry soap currently come in clear, food grade PET containers. They are BPA free, and are recyclable. We are currently pursuing ways to make a refill kit for our laundry soap so you can start out with a container and simply refill it. But if you choose not to keep the container, we request you consider recycling.
If you've purchased our soaps, you know that we primarily use cardboard boxes that are recyclable. We also try to re-use as much as we can. A lot of our ingredients come in bulk, and that means a lot of padding. We turn around and use the clean filler in a lot of our packages to you... this means that even if it is plastic, it makes at least two trips before heading to the trash.
You also probably know that we handcraft all our soaps from scratch in our Kentucky studio. Did you know that when we make our soaps, we don't use plastic? We are really picky about how our soaps are made, and that means using food-grade non-reactive equipment like glass and stainless steel. This also means that we are not purchasing or throwing away plastic containers from our manufacturing process. We would rather spend a little more time cleaning up than contributing to the landfill.
Did you know that one of our primary ingredients has been rescued on its journey to the landfill? It might sound strange, but in our "anti-fat" culture, we recently learned a local farm was forced to throw away much of its pastured pork fat. We reached out to the farm, and we are now rendering lard from locally & humanely raised pork. We are currently working on phasing in this beautiful lard to replace our previous source. Not only does this decrease waste, honor the animal, and support local farms, it also gives us the ability to use lard without preservatives.
We also only use certified organic essential oils. This might not sound terribly earth-friendly at first, but let me explain why this is such a big deal. It ensures we support the continuation of farming non-genetically modified crops, and it also supports organic farming (which means the reduction of pesticide use). Finally, the process by which essential oils are extracted is VERY important! A lot of extraction methods use petroleum by-products and can even be unhealthy. Some essential oils can even have added fillers like fragrances. We not only use certified essential oils, but we only select ones that have undergone extensive laboratory testing to ensure consistency in concentration and purity (specifically an all-natural product, the absence of petroleum products, and the absence of pesticides). Because of the oils we use, we have often heard many customers comment on the purity of the fragrance of our soaps. The oils last longer and perform better when they are the best quality.
Finally, we don't use essential oils that are damaging to the environment. We are very picky about the environmental impact of the essential oils we choose. Sometimes companies can leave significant and permanent damage by over-harvesting a precious native resource. You will find we don't use essential oils that can leave that kind of damaging impact.
