My cousin Ted made me feel a little guilty over using palm oil in my weekend batch of soap. Read his comment on my previous post to find out why. Of course, there are probably a lot of products I use that are grown or harvested in environmentally-destructive fashion.
Actually, I used a little more palm oil than I intended in this recipe. Both the palm oil and the coconut oil are good for the soap’s hardness and its lathering ability, but a soap made exclusively from either (or both) would dry your skin. (Ted’s comment, by the way, explains the difference between the two oils.)
I bought a big bleach-sized jug of palm oil from a mail order house. But it’s solid at room temperature, so when you use it you have to sit the jug in a sink full of hot water until some of the oil melts, then carefully pour what you need. I was measuring into the stainless steel stock pot which I have dedicated for soap-making; it was sitting on top of a scale and I had already added the coconut oil. I went a little overboard. I tried to add enough olive oil to compensate, but by that time it was already the largest batch I’d ever worked with.
I retroactively plugged the oil percentages into SoapCalc, which reports that the soap will be within acceptable values for all the various qualities (cleansing, conditioning, hardness, fluffy lather, stable lather, etc.).
Howdy–I wasn’t trying to inspire guilt. The other side of the palm oil debate (well, one of the other sides) is that the people in places like Indonesia should have the right to develop their own local industries and shouldn’t have to refrain just so western environmentalists can enjoy talking about biodiversity. Of course, you could then ask whether the local people actually profit, or whether all the benefits go to big corporations. In short, it is complicated, but I’m sure a gallon of palm oil used in home soap making isn’t going to be the thing that sets off a global environmental catastrophy.
Howdy–I wasn't trying to inspire guilt. The other side of the palm oil debate (well, one of the other sides) is that the people in places like Indonesia should have the right to develop their own local industries and shouldn't have to refrain just so western environmentalists can enjoy talking about biodiversity. Of course, you could then ask whether the local people actually profit, or whether all the benefits go to big corporations. In short, it is complicated, but I'm sure a gallon of palm oil used in home soap making isn't going to be the thing that sets off a global environmental catastrophy.
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