by Michael Bloch

Much of what goes down our drains winds up in the environment and potentially nasty chemicals from common soap residue are no different. There are greener ways to stay clean.

Most of us use normal soap on a daily basis, so literally millions of tonnes of soap is flushed the gurgler every year. It's an added threat to an already stressed aquatic environment.

So many soaps contain a variety of fragrances and chemicals that have the potential to harm the environment; especially anti-bacterial soaps. Some chemicals used in soap fragrances have been proven to cause birth defects and liver damage in animals.

Many anti-bacterial soaps contain MIT (methylisothiazolinone), which some studies have found to be allergenic, cytotoxic and linked to nerve cell death. Another anti-bacterial chemical used is Triclosan. This chemical is registered with the Environmental Protection Agency as being a pesticide and is believed to destroy fragile aquatic ecosystems.

These chemicals aren't the type of thing you want to risk using on your body, let alone escape into our waterways. Even if the potentially toxic chemicals are in minute amounts and they may not build up on or in our bodies, they can accumulate in the environment. What goes around, comes around.

Other ingredients often found in soap include paraffin wax, ozokerite, other crude oil derivatives and animal tallow (fat). This is just scratching the surface; the ingredient list of so many personal care products these days read off like a chemistry lesson.

Added to all that, in most commercial soap making processes, at the end of the process what's left is the basic soap product and glycerine. The glycerine, a useful emollient, is often sold separately as a moisturizer. This is rather ironic as soap with glycerine removed can dry out your skin.

Thankfully, there are plenty of more natural alternatives to using these chemical cocktails. After my run-in with the ingredient list of my shampoo bottle, I decided to kill two birds with one stone (I know, a rather inappropriate saying) and try out a vegetarian soap. I'm not too sure how it would be on long or color treated hair, but it's been great on my hair and I do feel very clean after using it!

Vegetarian soaps contain no animal products, so they are also a great choice for vegans. The types of vegetarian soaps available would be far too long to list, but they are made with plant oils and natural fragrances only and the glycerine is usually left in. The soap we buy is actually cheaper than the "normal" brand we used to purchase.

As far as I know, sodium hydroxide, also known as lye, is still needed to make any kind of useful bar soap, including vegetarian soap; but once the lye has reacted with the plant fats and oils, their chemical structures are changed and there's no harmful residue. This chemical reaction is called saponification.

I guess the modern methods of creating sodium hydroxide may not be all that earth friendly, but there's a line for everything and I do like to stay clean. Soap-free alternatives such as scrubbing with sand and hot cloths I'm not quite ready for, nor are our drains. Using vegetarian soap is at least somewhat better for you and for the environment than the common soaps we tend to buy.

If you're really adventurous you could try researching the following plants, said to be good soap alternatives:

• Philadelphus lewisii
• Yucca root
• Soap Lily
• Horse Chestnut
• Bracken
• Saponaria officinalis
• Christmas Rose
• Asparagus fern
• Daisies
• Ivy

... and the list goes on -- search for plants that contain high saponin levels, as saponins are natural detergents. Be careful in your experimentation though!

Michael Bloch is the owner and editor of Green Living Tips.com, an online resource powered by renewable energy offering a wide variety of earth friendly tips, green guides, advice and environment related news to help consumers and business reduce costs, consumption and environmental impact on the planet.