A simple bodywash and shampoo that saves you tons of money

It makes sense for cosmetic companies to sell directly ready-made ingredients for personal care products. Green products sell for $10 to $20 a bottle vs $3 in Walmart for the tough-skinned. They have more vertical sales and we save a lot of money. Imagine saving moving the water around in those bottles! Making your own body wash isn't crafty and time-consuming anymore.

SLSA recipe

Water 200g (~ one cup)
SLSA 10 g    (5% weight)
Glycerin 20 g (10% weight)
Essential oil 1 drop

Procedure: Dissolve SLSA in warm water. Stir and sit until you have a clear liquid. Add glycerin and essential oil. Bottle it. The clear liquid will turn into a white cream/paste after a few hours. I may be wrong but I think the glycerin "thickens" the solution.

I got a cheap electronic scale with 0.1 g resolution. But for these Chinese products, the accuracy may be +- 1g. So I might have brought one with 0.01 g resolution. The are about the same price. A higher resolution one has less range - can not take a heavy load.

You can find a 1 lb bag of SLSA everywhere, making hundreds of bottles of body wash with it. A bottle of vegetable glycerin is another $10; also it can make hundreds of bottles.

Depending on the hardness of your water, I would use 3% to 5% for body wash. And 5% to 10% for shampoo. The same for hand washing dishes; the glycerin is optional.

But is it any good? It's not as good as Castile Soap plus a lot of glycerin. But I don't feel dry after a shower. The shampoo cleans well for our hard water and oily hair.

SLSA is still an irritant in the same class of SLS and soap. If it takes off the oil of your skin, it can hurt the skin and eyes in high concentrations. Maybe SLSA is more gentle than SLS.

SLSA is an acetate, not sulfate, so hopefully, it cannot be manufactured in the same process as SLS, resulting in toxic contaminations.

The LSA ion is an organic compound with carbon chains; it had to come from living or dead living things. Derived from vegetable oil doesn't tell the whole story. As an organic compound, it is biodegradable in theory. To be eco-friendly, it has to be readily biodegradable. But I have seen no claims that it is degrading fast, which is important because, like most washing chemicals, they are toxic to aquatic lives.

The next project will be ready made chemicals that will be safe for humans and the environment. My requirement is "just add water".