Clear Skin, Clear Conscience: 4 Ways Ethical Soap Can Change your Life (and the World)

What difference does it make to switch to handcrafted Zambeezi bar soap? Turns out, it changes everything. 

1. Replaces harmful chemicals with restorative ingredients

Conventional body soaps contain a vast range of harmful chemicals, like ethanolamines. Diethanolamine, for example, has some connections to possibly causing kidney cancer. Zambeezi handcrafted soap bars stay far away from irritants and toxins. 

We use all-natural oils, Zambian beeswax, and moringa leaf powder, in our soap bars, along with some spices like turmeric, paprika, and cinnamon. 

In fact, let's look at each soap individually, so you can have total assurance that your soap bars are made of natural ingredients. 

Lemongrass Soap: saponified sunflower oil, saponified palm kernel oil, organic beeswax, lemongrass oil, ground turmeric, distilled water

Cassia Soap: saponified sunflower oil, saponified palm kernel oil, organic beeswax, cinnamon cassia oil, ground cinnamon, paprika, distilled water

Clove Soap: saponified sunflower oil, saponified palm kernel oil, clove oil, organic beeswax, distilled water

Spearmint Soap: saponified sunflower oil, saponified palm kernel oil, organic beeswax, spearmint oil, moringa leaf powder, distilled water

Tea Tree Soap: saponified palm kernel oil, saponified sunflower oil, organic beeswax, organic honey, tea tree oil, distilled water

Sweet Basil Soap: saponified sunflower oil, saponified palm kernel oil, organic beeswax, sweet basil oil, moringa leaf powder, distilled water

Lavender Soap: saponified sunflower oil, saponified palm kernel oil, organic beeswax, lavender oil, ground poppy seed, distilled water

If you have any questions about the ingredients that we incorporate into our handcrafted bar soaps, we are always open to answering them! Drop a comment below, or email us at team@zambeezi.com. 

2. Replaces wasteful packaging with beautiful African fabric

There's just something that catches the eye when you wrap your soap in color. At Zambeezi, we aren't on the conventional all-plastic bandwagon. 

Although we use some plastic wrapping when shipping to preserve the scent, we don't use plastic to wrap individual bar soaps, and highly prioritize waste-free methods all throughout the wrapping and storage process. 

Being a low-waste company means that buyers can be confident that their purchases aren't adding up in a landfill somewhere, but are actually supporting craftsmen and women in Zambia as well as in the U.S.!

We on the Zambeezi Team have heard lots of reports and ideas of how people repurposed the beautiful fabric that their soaps arrive in. Beeswax wraps, bandannas, and pillow cases are just a few of the uses that we've heard about! The fabric that the soaps come wrapped in gets upscaled into all kinds of creative projects - it's not the kind of packaging that begs to be thrown away. 

Have you repurposed your African soap fabric? We want to know about it! Create a post and tag us @zambeeziorganics or just let us know directly by using the email above!

3. Replaces exploitation with an emphasis on human dignity in the craft

From the systems of harvesting ingredients to the soap making process, large companies often let human rights take a backseat in their production of body care products. 

The palm oil that is used in many major brands is evidenced to be unethically sourced, with reports from Malaysia and Indonesia that workers were being underpaid and held to work against their will. 

Here at Zambeezi, we use fair trade and ethically produced palm oil that provides jobs in harvesting that provide alternatives to harmful logging and mining in the regions of Zambia that we source from. 

Accountability and relationships are central to our relationships with our partners in Zambia, and we want the presence of Zambeezi's business model to be impacting communities and honoring human dignity by providing quality, fairly paid jobs.

4. Replaces apathy with a clear conscience 

But using ethically made body soap also has an effect on you! Not just in physical wellness and functionality (although using ethical soap benefits that, too) but in helping prioritize what's important. 

Choosing ethical solutions for body soap and other body care needs is a choice that allows us to have a clear conscience in our purchases and satisfaction that we are playing a part in #peoplethriving around the globe. 

Instead of choosing the "ignorance is bliss" mentality and purchasing any cheap body soap, choosing Zambeezi allows you to care and do something about it. 

Thank you for supporting Zambeezi! Your choice of ethical, fair trade soap means the world.