GreenYour.com

Thanks, Rebecca. I was a consultant to Jill Schoff on the recent book "Green Up Your Cleanup".

If you're interested in more tweaking, I'll point out that you're very unlikely to find the word "biocompatible" on the label of soaps; if they're not labeled as antibacterial, that should be enough to assure no interference with septic tank bacteria would occur. Also, you mean "leaching", not "leeching". And dioxane is very unlikely to occur as a contaminant in solid (bar) soaps; it's only an issue with ethoxylated compounds, as used in some liquid "soaps".

The Pacifica soap I'm sure does not have a glycerin BASE, which would mean glycerin is its main ingredient. It has to have much more soap than glycerin, or it'd be sticky goo. Similarly, the Pangea Organics don't have an essential oil base. All these products have a SOAP base, with essential oils, glycerin etc. as minor ingredients.

Also, considering the general tone of your article, the mention under Blue Ridge Soap Shed of a soap to be used by "nature boys and girls who want to bathe in freshwater streams without impacting the environment", in view of the widespread recommendation (sometimes a legal requirement) to not use or discharge even pure soap directly into a natural watercourse.

I'm not saying I endorse the general thrust of these articles, but I'd like to help you be consistent in whatever you espouse.

Bar soaps do not, and never did, contain phosphate to any significant degree.

Also, the only ingredients in bar soaps that aren't readily biodegradable could only be very minor ones.