by Jennifer McKinley, Founder, COR Silver Skincare
Consumers are more and more aware of not only what products are made from, but also how they are made. This is great news! The beauty industry has quite a habit of hand-waving about this or that 'technology'. Smart consumers can avoid being misled.
Here's the straight scoop on our silver soap.
First off, silver isn't a truly sustainable ingredient — there's no two ways about that. Any company claiming otherwise is simply dishonest.
But, in making or using a product that includes silver, you still have many other choices to make that affect the environment, for better or worse. We always shoot for "better."
Here are five important ways COR strives to have the best impact possible on the environment. It's a bit science-y, and we love that; solid science (not made-up 'face technology' jibber-jabber) is behind every decision about our products, ingredients, and formulation. So, grab your coffee and let's chat about COR's eco-friendly beauty.
1. No palm oil.
Palm oil is widely used in soaps and other cleansing and beauty products. Problem is, it's generally terrible for the environment, because tropical forests are being stripped and replaced by palm plantations at an alarming rate.
It can be sustainably grown and harvested, but most of the time it isn't, because that would cost more. And cheap beauty products tend to choose the cheaper palm oil.
We just don't use palm oil at all. No need to worry about where it comes from.
2. No triclosan or parabens, ever.
These are ingredients that have bad side-effects on water systems and any marine life that gets exposed to large concentrations.
Most skincare companies have eliminated triclosan, or are working to do that.
Parabens are sadly still pretty common in moisturizers.
COR doesn't contain either ingredient, and never has, and never will.
3. No microplastics, ever.
It wasn't long ago that many companies were putting 'scrubbing microbeads' in facial cleansers. Those plastics wind up in the water supply.
COR never has. We get plenty of gentle skin-clearing power from our natural ingredients including chitosan, a natural fiber.
4. No chemicals used in refining our silver.
This point gets at the "how" of making colloidal silver soap, rather than the "what" is in it.
To make silver soap, you need pure silver (okay, that seems obvious!). One of the cheaper ways to extract pure silver from ore is by using chemicals.
A "surfactant" is a chemical compound that helps separate one substance from another, in this case separating out the silver from whatever it's mixed with. The problem is that companies have to manufacture this unnatural chemical surfactant, which is then also an environmentally unfriendly byproduct of your silver processing.
Many colloidal silver products use this chemical process, but COR does not.
Electrolytic refining is the only method used to refine silver for COR. Electrolytic refining runs an electric current through a silver-containing solution to extract just the silver. This method is more energy-efficient than traditional metal smelting processes, and it also does not use any chemicals.
The ingredient lists on your soaps aren't going to reveal which companies use chemical extraction. However, here's how you can tell: Those silver soaps are opaque — meaning you can't see light through the product.
COR is translucent; hold it in front of a light, and you will see the light through the soap. There's no light-blocking residue from chemical extraction, because we don't use it.
5. Very little water (just add your own!)
Moisturizers, gels, creams, lotions, shampoos - the first ingredient in SO many beauty and skincare products is water. It's wasteful.
Putting lots of water into a product, and then shipping it to where the product will be sold and used, is expensive and NOT eco-friendly. Beauty products that include water take up more space, use more packaging, and burn more fuel in the shipping process.
That's why high-efficiency laundry detergent has become popular and important, for example. Less water in the product means less waste and environmental damage.
A huge reason why COR Silver Soap is so efficient is that we use very little water in making the product. Not only that, but the soap gets "cured" or dried before packaging. You might even say COR is not a soap, but a dehydrated foaming cleanser. (We have gone back and forth about calling it "soap" for years!)
The small amount of water you need for each daily use comes from your tap. No wasteful shipping or plastic packaging involved.
About the author: Jennifer McKinley created COR in 2008 to revitalize her own sun-damaged and breakout-prone skin.
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