The Co-Operative, Love Your Skin, Pure Soap - Review

Soap - Co-Operative, Love Your Skin, Pure Soap

Warning: This is a rather long blog post, occasionally wandering off topic, and the only break from it is the inclusion of several photos - of soap. Riveting! 

Many moons ago when we lived in France, and we lived a very different life to the one we live now, I would purchase mostly organic, or natural, or chemical-free beauty products.
All of which were a lot more expensive than their non-organic variety.
But now we are living back in Blighty, and my budget is not what it once was, *sob *sob *sob I pretty much just use anything.
Having said that, I'm not someone who uses a large amount of beauty products anyway, so it's more or less just the basics; shampoo, shower gel, deodorant, and occasionally moisturiser.

Recently I have been looking longingly at a couple of the websites I used to order my beauty products from. Having mentioned that it was when I lived in France that I bought lots of stuff from them, the main website I used is actually a British site. Yep, whatever!
Not sure why I even mentioned living in France, but it may be because today it is 25c and sunny where I used to live, and where I live now it is cold, dull, and spitting with rain.
Anyway, so, I used to like buying what I believed were healthy products, products that were not only not damaging to my skin, body, and health, but were actually good for me.
I say I believed the products that I used to purchase were good for me, but that's not completely true.
I am naturally a cynical bugger, contrary too. So sometimes I get it into my head that my body deserves to be treated with the best care I can give it, and then other times I think that the stress and over-thinking of weighing-up the pros and cons, and health effects, of organic vesus non-organic products is ridiculous first-world nonsense, and there are far far more important things to be concerning myself with, and also because I know the human body is a truly amazing thing, surely my liver will filter out all of the harmful crap and I'll be ok.

Yep, over-thinking is a serious problem for me. It's first-world nonsense, but it's a problem.
So, as I am currently no longer in a position to be able to spend obscene amounts of money on organic, natural, chemical-free beauty products, I simply grab whatever I need, when I need it. Or more accurately Mr.R buys it for me - he does all of our shopping - I rarely leave the house unless it's to walk the dog.
So a couple of days ago Mr.R popped out to our local supermarket, which is a small branch of the Co-Op. Before he went he asked if there was anything I needed. Yes, soap. I asked him to look for a product that sounded gentle for the skin, and didn't have a list of ingredients as long as Naomi Campbells legs.
Mr.R returned with a bar of the Co-Op own brand soap.

Having used the Co-Op Love Your Skin pure soap for a few days I can say I like it, I'm impressed with it. It's perfume free, so obviously it doesn't have a strong aroma of anything, it lathers well, which is nice especially as we have horribly hard tap water in this house, and despite washing my hands hundreds of times a day (no, I am not exaggerating) the soap bar seems to be lasting well.

The info on the soap wrapper says -
Love Your Skin
Pure Soap
Perfume and colour free for healthy feeling skin

The wrapper also has a couple logos -
One of which is a 'Cruelty Free' logo with 'First UK Supermarket Certified for Toiletries and Household.
The other is a 'V' logo with 'No Animal Ingredients' written underneath it.

The ingredients are listed as -
Sodium Palmate,
Sodium Palm Kernelate,
Water,
Glycerin,
Sodium Chloride,
Citric Acid,
Tetrasodium EDTA,
Etidronic Acid.

Eight ingredients in total is not bad, although I know some of them are not particularly good substances. But I remember some of my previous so-called healthy beauty products would have 20-30 ingredients, and that can't be a good thing.
Another thing that I think it a positive for this soap is that it is made in the UK, and it's not often you can say that about anything these days.

I haven't only used the Co-Op Love Your Skin soap to wash my hands, I have also, on a couple of occasions, washed my face with it too.
Oh no! The horror of washing ones face with a bar of soap - I know it's considered a crime by some people. Actually I'm pretty certain most of the women in France would be appalled at my laissez-faire attitude to my 'skincare' regime. HaHaHa!
But I've found the Co-Op own brand bar of soap to be very gentle on my skin, and I think it may even be improving the skin on my face. My face feels lovely and soft, and I may be imagining it, but I think the skin on my face looks much less tired, and better still much more vibrant.

Ha! As usual I have rambled on and on, although I do seem to have at least managed to remain on the topic of soap - well, apart from a small detour to France, but who wouldn't want to go to France?
I'd still be there now, if it wasn't for the political situation etc.
Ha! But to write about that would be wandering off of the subject of soap, way off - there's nothing clean about politics.

So, now my mind has wandered slightly, from soap to France to politics, I've sort of forgotten what it was I wanted to write on this blog post, other than my opinion on the Co-Op own brand of soap...........

Right, yes, I remember!
I was reading the news this morning, online, not an actual real printed on paper newspaper, not that that's in any way relevant, when I came across an article about organic beauty products costing twice as much as their non-organic equivalents, and that how the organic beauty products business is all a big con.
The article was a lengthy one, much much longer than this one, unbelievable but true, and it wasn't particularly well written, I mean it was even worse than this blog post, yet again unbelievable but true, but in amongst the rambling nonsense, (which is something I know a lot about) there were a few interesting facts.
Basically the article stated that in the beauty industry the word organic actually doesn't mean much at all.
It also listed these points -

1. Unlike the food industry, the beauty industry is not regulated, so organic beauty products do not have a legal definition.
2. A beauty products can be labelled 'organic' even if the it contains less than 1% of organic ingredients.
3. Us British folk spend a whopping £32.7 million on organic beauty products a year.
4. Campaigners believe some of the ingredients in some of the 'organic' beauty products are harmful to human health and the environment.
5. Four out of five households in the UK currently purchase organic beauty products.
6. People aged under 35 are reportedly the biggest purchasers of organic beauty products.

Emma Reinhold of the Soil Association reportedly said, ‘When it comes to beauty products, there is no legal definition of the term “organic”.
‘Food is strictly regulated and, in the case of processed foods, can only state it is organic if 95 per cent of the ingredients are organic, i.e. produced under strict conditions.'
‘A beauty product, however, can contain 0.01 per cent organic lavender oil and still legally claim to be organic. But most shoppers don’t know this.’

It's all a bit of a mess when you want to purchase organic beauty products, because there is no industry standard that has to be met, and no legal definition of what organic means as far as a product is concerned, and as brands tend to use self-appointed certification bodies, so it is practically impossible to know exactly what's what.
On the downside, purchasing organic beauty products is definitely confusing, and worse still a complete waste of your time and your money. On the upside, if there is one, treating your skin to the best organic beauty products may be better for your skin and your health than using non-organic products. But then it may not. Oh I don't know.

Unfortunately the unregulated organic beauty products industry doesn't care, and why would it when
the increasing interest from customers in organic beauty products has seen sales in the UK rise up by 17% year on year.

I would like the government to sort out the organic beauty products industry, have some proper scheme where every product is truly organic, and the percentage of each individual organic ingredient is clearly written on the product label.
But sadly I doubt that will ever happen. And even if it did, I doubt it would mean much anyway.
I doubt we'd be any safer buying organic beauty products, because I'm certain it would be exactly the same as the food industry.
There are so many different schemes that the food industry use, you see various stickers on products; for example a sticker stating that the product was reared on such and such a farm, usually a twee sounding name, but it's all nonsense.
The producers simply pay back-handers to the right people, and then slap little stickers on the food, which misleads the customers and consumers into believing that the food came from a lovely little farm in the country somewhere.
It definitely conjures up a far more pleasant image than the reality of some highly industrial super-farm which treats animals appallingly, and its customers with no care either.

Oops, now I have wandered off topic - it's because I'm hungry, and the thought of soap wasn't doing anything for my taste-buds - even if the soap is suitable for vegetarians, so then that made me think about meat - because as I said I am hungry - and I'm not a vegetarian, and even if I was (which I have been a couple of times in the past) I wouldn't want to eat soap.
Then the thought of eating soap made me think of the expression, 'wash your mouth out with soap' which I remember hearing adults say when I was a child, when someone, usually another child had used a swear word.
Hmm, not sure where that train of thought was leading me, so I'll stop.

Getting back on to the topic of soap -
As I said buying organic beauty products is all very confusing.
I also mentioned the Soil Association, but really that's not even as straight forward and honest as you may think.
There are several independent certifying boards, one of which is the Soil Association, others include CosmeBio, and Ecocert.
All of them have different rules, so for example a 'certified organic' sticker from the Soil Association is not the same as one from CosmeBio or Ecocert.
It's all nonsense.

The Soil Association certificate has a 95% rule, so 95% of the plant-based ingredients must be organic, the remaining ingredients reportedly have to meet strict criteria. This means that the product must be at least 20% organic.
For example if a shampoo is 80% water, it's only the remaining 20% of the ingredients that have to be organic in order for it to be given an 'organic' sticker - because water can't be organic.

So paying twice the price for a bottle of shampoo because it's organic seems like a high price when you consider that in fact it's only 20% of the bottle contents that are actually organic.
And if the water that's used in the average organic shampoo is anything like the tap water in our house, then - Yuck! I wouldn't want to pay the same for it, let alone double.

I'm not singling out the Soil Association in particular, it's just that I know people tend to think that it's all fine and dandy if a product has a Soil Association label on it.
I know people are very busy living their lives; family, friends, jobs, worrying about finances etc. so we probably don't stop to really think deeply enough about what an organic sticker on a product really means, whether it's a bar of soap or a packet of bacon. See, I said I was hungry. Mmm, bacon!
We glance at a product, we see a Soil Association, or some other so-called organic company logo etc. and we immediately think all is good, when in fact that may not be 100% true.

So as to not lambaste the Soil Association only, both CosmeBio and Ecocert have similar rules for their products, they have the same 95% rule for their plant-based ingredients, but only 10% for the remaining ingredients in order to be awarded their organic certification.

I have only mentioned Soil Association, CosmeBio, and Ecocert because they were the main companies mentioned in the news article that I read this morning, which is responsible for me rambling on and on, and not sticking to my original intention of saying that we bought a cheap bar of own-brand soap from the Co-Op, and considering I used to buy expensive so-called organic beauty products when we lived in France, I am very impressed with the Co-Op soap.
A news article that I wish I hadn't read this morning, because then I would probably have spent my time playing with dog, rather than writing this blog post, and I know he would have much prefered that.

Phew! The above paragraph is just one small paragraph - I should have just written that, and left the other stuff about the Soil Association, the organic beauty business, the government, and the fact that I'm hungry, for another blog post.
Actually I think, as I've spent time and energy writing this rant, I will probably upload the bulk of it, the bits about the above mentioned irrelevant to the Co-Op soap review, to a separate blog post at a later date. Don't say I didn't warn you.

If you're still reading then maybe you need to step away from your computer, or whatever device you're reading this on, and do something better with your time.
We're here for a good time, not a long time.
Life is short!
But if you are still here, here's one last fact to remember when purchasing any beauty product, whether it's organic or not - just because a label says 'Not Tested on Animals' it doesn't mean animals weren't hurt during the process of bringing the product to market.
It simply means that the end product, the content of the bottle or whatever, were not tested on animals.
It doesn't mean that each of the individual ingredients in the end product were not tested on animals.

Oh yes, and while I remember one last thing, (a second last thing), the Body Shop may be well-known for their cruelty-free products, and as far as I know they do not test any of their products on animals, but as they are now owned by L'Oreal, who do test their products on animals, shopping at Body Shop may not be suitable for you if you are seriously against animal cruelty.

That again is a whole other blog post. But fear not, I am not going to be writing about animal cruelty, mainly because it would be hypocritical considering I'm very much looking forward to my lunch today - beef stew. Mmm, cow!

So, to end this unbelievably long blog post, which I truly did think would only be a short paragraph, about the Co-Op own-brand soap, I shall say it's good. I like it! And I will most definitely buy it again.

Hmm, all of this thinking has made my brain fuzzy and the typing has made me feel dirty, (I'm weird) so I'm off to wash my face and hands - with Co-Op own-brand soap of course. :)

If you have anything to say about the above nonsense, I'd love to hear it. :)