The Green touch

I know I haven't posted in a while. I've had a busy summer working and no internet most of the time. My summer job ends soon so hopefully (or not hopefully) I'll have more time to write after that. A message especially for my Norwegian readers: There is a documentary at 20:15 tonight on NRK1 about reuse of electronic waste in Africa. Gjenbrukslandet by Håvard Fossum Short extract here. More info in Norwegian here.

Text by Fremtiden i våre hender The first "feast against famine" (Matgildet mot Hungersnød) took place in Oslo last year. This year the event will be organized nationally in Oslo, Bergen, Trondheim, Tromsø, and Stavanger. We make food that would otherwise have been thrown away into tasty food which will become money which will be used towards food for the Sahel area (in West Africa). One billion people today suffer from chronic starvation. At the same time 30 procent of the food produced in the world is thrown away. Domestically in Norway we throw away close to one thousand tons of good food every day. Through the project ”feast against famine” we shine a light on this tragic paradox and try to help solve the problem. In this way we grasp onto two of the largest - and inextricably interwoven - challenges that the world faces today: poverty and environmental destruction. In the week before the event takes place, we will collect perfectly usable food that selected stores o...

0 - Why and how to make your own soap? 1 - How: the saponification process 2 - Using caustic soda: safety precautions 3 - Using caustic soda: the online calculators 4 - Superfatting your soap 5 - Oil and other ingredients you may use in a soap Vegetal oils and animal fats Fat is the basic ingredient in soap; you can use anything as long as you know the amount of lye that is required to saponify it. Fortunately, most online calculators are very complete. So you can use any oil/fat but it's important to choose them carefully. For example, I once tried a recipe with only rapeseed and sunflower oil... not a good idea. I decided to make soap in order to reduce my carbon footprint. So I use mostly oils that are from Europe (rather a common kitchen oil), easy to find, and not too expensive (but this is still Norway...). Organic, cold pressed, refined? Organic: no pesticides or other chemicals are used to produce it; organic oil is most often col...

0 - Why and how to make your own soap? 1 - How: the saponification process 2 - Using caustic soda: safety precautions 3 - Using caustic soda: the online calculators 4 - Superfatting your soap Superfatting your soap means you will use excess oil, i.e. more oil than necessary for saponification. Consequently, not all the oil used will be turned into soap; some of it will remain as oil. When you use any detergent, shower gel, or even homemade soap, it destroys the skin's protective film, which takes a few hours to reconstitute. Washing too often will weaken your skin. When your skin is dry for example, it's actually better not to wash - with soap or gel - the dry and sensitive parts every day rather than trying to fix them with cream afterward. The oil contained in superfatted soap temporarily replaces this natural film by leaving an oily (but not greasy) film on the skin. This and the natural glycerine contained in cold process soap make homemade soaps very good ...

0 - Why and how to make your own soap? 1 - How: the saponification process 2 - Using caustic soda: safety precautions 3 - Using caustic soda: the online calculators The process of saponification requires a precise quantity of lye; this quantity varies depending on the oil(s) you use. So always use a lye calculator, even if you reuse a recipe seen on the internet (check twice!).  The Sage I mostly use The Sage calculator  Make sure to choose the right weight measurement.   Sodium hydroxide (already checked) is the lye we use for solid soap. Potassium hydroxide is used for liquid soap. If you're using lye flakes/beads, just fill in the oil information. In some countries, at least in France, you can buy water and lye already mixed, that's what "liquid lye solution" is for. The concentration that you have to write in the box must be around 30%.   *** Enter the amount for each oil you w...

0 - Why and how to make your own soap? 1 - How: the saponification process 2 - Using caustic soda: safety precautions Sodium hydroxide is very corrosive; its pH varies between 12 and 14 (FYI, water has a pH of 7, skin around 6, and hair around 5). Making soap requires you to mix caustic soda with water (or another liquid, for example, herb tea), which will significantly increase the liquid temperature. To avoid dangerous splashes, it's very important to POUR THE CAUSTIC SODA INTO THE WATER (not the water into the soda), and this lye mixture into the oil. Pouring water into caustic soda would provoke a "volcano effect". The same thing will happen at this point if you use objects made of materials that react with lye e.g. metals (except stainless steel) and wood. Using glass containers and a stainless steel spoon to stir is a good solution. And you don't want the volcano effect to happen because:            ...

0 - Why and how to make your own soap?  1 - How: the saponification process    Soap is the result of a chemical reaction between fatty substances (oils, lard, vegetable butter) and sodium hydroxide also called lye or caustic soda (NaOH). Caustic soda is a dangerous substance and is to be used very carefully, but it is totally transformed through the process: none of it remains at the end of the chemical reaction...if you used the right quantity of lye. If you use more lye than required your soap will be "caustic" and irritating. Therefore it's recommended that you use less soda and more oil than the exact amount required for total saponification. Firstly, it's a safety precaution: using more oil than necessary for the chemical reaction is a guarantee that the lye will be entirely transformed through the process. And more than that, with extra oil (nonsaponified - remaining oil), your soap will be even softer on the skin. This extra oil is called "sup...