In the gradual process to rid my household of as many toxic products as possible, I finished of the vat of liquid hand soap we bought at Costco over a decade ago (I'm not even kidding!) & have replaced it with
Val's Veggie bar soap. I like the Val because it has simple ingredients, without anything unpronounceable at all. And it's not expensive! However, I find it takes quite a lot of rinsing to get it off your hands, in cool water particularly. Anybody out there who has a toddler will probably know that time is of the essence when washing their hands. Sprout still thinks washing his hands is fun, so I don't have to drag him in there, but the longer it takes to rinse the soap off, the more water ends up splashed all over my clothes & his, the walls & the rest of the bathroom.
After several failed attempts at making liquid hand soap from bar soap, I started looking for a liquid alternative that doesn't have any artificial colouring, scent or other nasties like parabens, antibacterial agents (so unnecessary: all soap is antibacterial) & so on. Then I had a bottle of
Coco & Tini Foaming Soap fall in my lap. It was in the swag bag I received as one of the
Top 30 Bloggers at Vancouver Mom's Fabulous back in June.
I tried out the Coco & Tini Foaming Soap on Sprout the next day & he was enthralled by the handful of foam that came out of the pump. I had to convince him to rub it around on his hands. It stuck to his hands & didn't drip, then was really easy to rinse off. I like the lavender scent (which comes from Lavandula Angustifolia--actual lavender) & the fact that it should pump out at least 160 doses of soap.
I like that Coco & Tini is a local Vancouver area company dedicated to making safer bath products for children.
They like to keep the ingredients list simple with nothing unecessary, but what they do use is quality, natural-source ingredients. You won't find any of the big no-nos in their products: sodium lauryl
sulfate or sodium laureth sulfate, parabens, propylene glycol,
artificial preservatives or artificial fragrances.
Now the soap is marketed as having '100% natural-source ingredients', but does that mean they're actually safer? Here are the ingredients listed on the label: Aqua, Sodium Lauroyl Sarcosinate, Disodium Lauramphodiacetate, Lauramine Oxide, Glycerine, Sodium Hydroxymethylglycinate, Lavandula Angustifolia Oil, Camomilla Recutita Flower Oil, Hydroxypropyl Methylcellulose, Disodium Glutamate Diacetate. I recognize lavender, chamomile & water, but the rest are pretty unpronounceable. From brief research on the
Environmental Working Group's Skin Deep website, it seems that the majority of the substances get a 1 or 0 rating, meaning very low tocixity, though the sodium lauroyl sarcosinate gets a 4. When I asked Jason from Coco & Tini about it, he tells me it's derived from coconut & functions as a mild surfactant.
Coco & Tini Foaming Hand Soap is about $14 (remember what I mentioned about not using cheap ingredients) for a bottle that has at least 160 'doses' of soap in it. If you're concerned about the chemicals in personal care products, I think the Coco & Tini Foaming soap is a good alternative to the cheaper mainstream stuff like
Kandoo Foaming Hand Soap, Kandoo scores a 6 on EWG & has a lot of numbers in the ingredient list, which is never good.
Coco & Tini also makes baby shampoo, bubble bath, body wash & more. Their products are available at lots of places, including:
Whole Foods,
Saf & Benjamin,
Hip Baby,
Raspberry Kids,
Lusso Baby & of course the
Coco & Tini website.
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