IS YOUR SOAP BIODEGRADABLE?

 

Firstly, it is important to define what “biodegradable” actually means, and a good working definition goes along the lines of “a product that has the ability to break down, safely and relatively quickly, by biological means, into the raw materials of nature and disappear into the environment.” And if this happens we can be assured of nice clean waterways and a clean environment.

We are bombarded daily with buzzwords, and “biodegradable” is probably the most misused and misunderstood. One of the difficulties is that for long time there were no guidelines or regulations, and therefore many products have been described as biodegradable without any real justification, and at the same time not often used for products (such as soap or paper) that really are biodegradable.

OK, now here is an important point in answering the question “is your soap biodegradable?” Soap itself is a natural organic product that is inherently biodegradable, and the soapy greywater from a single household may biodegrade easily if drained into a backyard where it comes into direct contact with soil and soil microorganisms. But, if that same soap went into a sewage line shared with many other households, and this line fed into a waterway along with other sewage lines, then we have problems. There would be more soap going into that waterway than the microorganisms to biodegrade, and therefore under these circumstances your soap is not biodegradable.

If you check the ingredients of Indochine Natural soap, you will find that they are made entirely from plant materials; therefore we could say they are 100% biodegradable. But the real issue here is where and how they are used that ultimately determines their biodegradability.