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Soap Nuts Reviews
This page will be dedicated to reviews of soap nuts suppliers and the soap nut products they offer.
All soap nuts reviews will be based on personal experience of using the soap nuts from each supplier.
We encourage others to share their own experience with an individual soap nuts supplier, however, we strongly discourage any comment that is strictly based on personal gain. Email the review to me with contact information and I will be happy to consider sharing it with my readers.
If you are a soap nuts seller and we fail to list you on the site, then please email us to let us know about your website, product, or blog. Please be willing to supply a sample of your product if you would like it reviewed here. I will be unbiased in my soap nuts reviews because I want to encourage everyone who is selling quality soap nuts. However, be aware that I am among the deepest green greenies out there so if your soap nuts are good quality, but your packaging is not as green as it can be I will note that in my review of your soap nuts products.
The more soap nuts information the better because knowledge is power, and while ignorance may be bliss it does not automatically follow that ignorance is beneficial.
Help us educate others about where to buy soap nuts, ways to use soap nuts, and reviews of the companies you’ve purchased soap nuts products from either online or offline.
Also included on this soap nuts review pages will be some reviews others who have used soap nuts from various suppliers have shared with me about their own experiences. I will note that next to those reviews to differentiate them from my own personal experiences.
The following are soap nuts reviews based on a side by side comparison of the four brands of soap nuts I have personally tried.
Maggie’s – This was the first brand of soap nuts I tried after reading an article in a newsletter about the existence of soap nuts. I ordered a trial size, since I am a skeptic in the extreme, and like most people I did not want to commit to a large amount until I was sure they would work well.
I received my trial size bag of soap nuts and eagerly tore open the padded envelope in which they arrived. I had laundry piled up so I dove right in. The first load of laundry I did was a load of towels since they were on top of the laundry hamper. I washed in warm, which was my habit then and did a full load.
I couldn’t wait for the wash cycle to end. When I pulled the towels out I was struck by the total lack of scent in my laundry. I am not a lover of perfumed anything so that was a good start. Into the dryer the towels went.
The final outcome was quite impressive. My towels were very soft and fluffy after just one washing in soap nuts and although none of them were really dirty I was very pleased.
However, one thing that did not please me was the excessive amount of paper wasted by the company when sending a trial size. The padded envelope of course is not environmentally friendly, nor was the way the sample was packaged. The trial size came on a printed cardboard hanger, like for a retail display and the soap nuts were inside a cellophane pouch stapled into the hang card. Inside the envelope was a full color tri-fold brochure which really offered nothing more than an image of a chemical free life. The soap nuts wash bag was also printed with the company logo which again I see as a waste of resources, especially since the printing washed right off the bag in the first load. For me the wash bag just needs to hold up under use, not be pretty or decorated.
I didn’t appreciate the excessive and non-green packaging and marketing materials included with a sample and that was enough to make me decide not to purchase more soap nuts from Maggie’s. Also as I tried other soap nuts from different suppliers I noticed that Maggie’s seemed to be smaller in size,and much darker and dried out than the ones I got from future companies.
Lullwater Soap Nuts – The second brand of soap nuts that I tried was Lullwater. I must admit I bought them solely because of their price for a kilo. I found their soap nuts performed well and this was when I noticed how much larger Lullwater’s were than Maggie’s.
Again their packaging was one deterrent to me becoming a loyal buyer. They print all of their usage information on the bags, which I see as a waste of natural resources and fossil fuels for the printing. I don’t know what material or ink they use for the printing but my guess is that it is not eco-friendly.
Since the printing either wears off or rubs off the bag in places with constant use the printing seemed even more wasterful to me and unnecessary. Besides which, whenever I wanted to show someone the instructions for using them I had to carry the kilo bag around to show people what they are and how they work.
I also found their soap nuts were what I would consider VERY sticky and what I would call mushy. I think this is because in addition to the printed muslin bag they use, they line the muslin with a cellophane (plastic) bag. Maybe someone suggested this to them, but I find it held moisture inside the cellophane and when improperly stored that moisture causes the soap nuts to begin releasing saponin. Consequently inconsistent results can be experienced because the first load you wash with fresh soap nuts has lots of saponin released into the water, and less in future loads. I was not a professional soap nuts users at this point so I didn’t really pay close attention to how many loads I got out of each wash bag.
I think many new soap nuts users buy solely based on price, and as you get more familiar with using them you learn the tricks to make them last longer and do more loads of laundry. Again for me Lullwater wastes natural resources with their packaging, and that’s in opposition to one of the main reasons I use soap nuts, which is their green factors.
Symbiotik/Eco solutions – My third foray was to begin buying soap nuts in bulk with the idea of reselling them. So off to Ebay I went looking was a company with good customer approvals, good pricing, and enough information to make me believe they knew something about soap nuts besides that they could make money selling them.
I bought what was supposed to be 10 kilos of soap nuts from a company in Canada called Symbiotik – Eco solutions whose Ebay seller name is brillantecosolutions. The soap nuts arrived quickly considering that they came from Canada. They were in a re-used box, packaged in plain muslin bags, and the box had no packing materials in it. Now all of that is fine with me because the re-used box may have been the inexpensive way to send them but ultimately it was reuse (which is good).
The quality however left a great deal to be desired. Some bags had perfect soap nuts in them, mostly whole, and others were one giant chunk of soap nuts stuck together like glue. obviously these had not been properly stored and in fact several of the muslin bags had big brown places on them where the saponin had obviously leeched off the soap nuts surface due to moisture and then dried also causing huge hunks of soap nuts to stick to the bag as well. What a horrible mess. Had I actually tried to resell these I would have lost money. Instead I began distributing the ones I could to friends and family to try, and grinding the big chunks of sticky soap nuts into soap nauts powder. That experience actually was the basis of one of my early posts on this blog.
Okay so lesson learned cheaper is not better when it comes to soap nuts (at least not in my experiences).
Undeterred and now quite in love with soap nuts and constantly discovering new ways to use them for homemade green cleaning products I was determined to find a soap nuts supplier who not only understood me as a customer but provided consistent quality soap nuts.
That determination is how I finally found my way to NaturOli. My soap nuts adventures began in May 2008 and my hunt for the best quality, greenest soap nuts supplier ended in late June 2008.
NaturOli Soap Nuts – What’s so special about NaturOli and their soap nuts? Well after weeks of emailing with Chris Sicurella, NaturOli founder I learned a great deal about that. They import soap nuts directly from Nepal in bulk in cargo containers. They hand sort those bulk soap nuts to whole soap berries and obvious halves to make it easy to use the right amount every time and that their customers always receive consistent quality soap nuts.
Remember that’s HAND SORT (no machines, no fossil fuels consumed for it). They package in high quality PLAIN muslin bags, they print their soap nuts instruction tags on reycled paper using soy ink, and they ship in plain cardboard cartons and use cornstarch (biodegradable) peanuts for the package filler. They even seal the boxes with PAPER tape (yes paper not plastic or celllophane). So they got me by my tree roots for their green packaging immediately when my package arrived. Now remember I ordered through their store like a regular customer this wasn’t specially packaged for me.
Now let’s talk NaturOli soap nuts quality. As described the 8 oz bag was whole soap berries and obvious halves. No plastic or cellophane liner, no sticky chunks of soap nuts, and no mushy soap nuts. Funny thing is that after using only NaturOli soap nuts for over a year now I am still using the same wash bag I got with my very first order. That’s one good quality wash bag let me tell you. I figure I’ve done over 200 loads of laundry with that same wash bag. I take the wash bag I get with a new order and pass it on to a friend with a sample of soap nuts.
I have to say I really like that this company does all their packaging and product formulating here in the US. Although I think it is very important to support economically disadvantaged countries by buying things that only they produce, I also don’t like companies that package overseas to save money when so many Americans are in need a work.
I especially don’t like companies that are silly enough to brag about how they’ve saved you money by packaging overseas. More importantly when a soap nuts supplier packages overseas I cannot feel confident that they have any quality control whatsoever, especially when a company like Maggie’s packages in sealed cardboard boxes.
Of course if you go back and read my recent blog posts you’ll see I am in love with all of NaturOli’s soap nuts products from their soap bars to the new soap nuts shampoo bar that is about to be released.
I hope the information I have shared helps people find the soap nuts supplier who best understands them as a consumer and also provides the best quality soap nuts for the money they can spend for them.
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