Help Bird and Insect Populations with your Yard or Garden

Florida Native Wildflower Monarda punctata (spotted Horsemint)

According to scientists who published in the journal Science this month the number of birds in the United States and Canada has declined by 3 billion over the past 50 years. That is nearly 30 percent of bird populations, and not just rare or endangered bird species but also common birds. Birds particularly impacted are those which feed on insects.  This downward trend runs parallel to a downward global trend in insect populations. A few of the suggested causes for the insect decline include habitat destruction caused by urbanisation, pesticides, climate change, and artificial lighting.

 There are two easy ways that you can help make a difference in healthy insect and bird populations. First, eliminate pesticides from your yard, and second grow a garden. Any size garden is helpful, even potted patio plants. Native plants for the yard are low maintenance and act as host plants for insects and pollinators. Another good place to start is with an Organic soil mix and seeds of native wildflowers. Look for native wildflowers and plants at your local farmer's markets.

Florida Wildflower Tropical Sage,  photo by Carl E Lewis (CC BY 2.0)

Aquarian Bath is doing our part to improve habitat for birds and insects! We were recently featured in the Daytona Beach News Journal for creating a certified wildlife habitat though the National Wildlife Federation and the Florida Wildlife Federation.

Clip of News Journal Article "Local business makes a difference to protect wildlife" Sept 2019

Check out Mimosa Saturdays at Beehive Antiques in Daytona Beach

Start your weekend right with a free mimosa while sipping and shopping over a dozen great antique dealers and Aquarian Bath soaps and shampoos in the new Beehive Antiques 3000 sq foot location at 1019 Ridgewood Ave, Daytona Beach, FL.

Saturday, July 6, 2019 at 10 AM – 5 PM  

Saturday, July 13, 2019 at 10 AM – 5 PM  

Soap Grafting, a simple zero waste hack to make your bars last longer

If you have one wet Aquarian Bath soap or shampoo bar sliver, you can easily fuse it to another soap or shampoo bars. Just squeeze the two bars together and set them aside to completely dry out. This is a great alternative to wasting the last bit of your soap or loosing a small piece of shampoo bar in your hair! 

We also have Organic cotton/ Hemp soap saver sets to go with your soap and shampoo bars if you prefer. 

Free Jasmine Rose Soap Coupon

Valentine's Day is coming and our seasonal Jasmine Rose soaps are in stock. We have them for sale in heart shapes and rounds.

We also have Jasmine Rose Soaps stamped with "love." When you use the coupon code "soaplove" with your next order $35 or more we will include one of the "love" bars with your order from Aquarian Bath. This offer ends February 14th or until we run out. 

Feinstein's Cosmetic Bill Jeopardizes Small Businesses, Joba and Entreprenurial Opportunites

Broadview Heights, Ohio; April 21, 2015 - The Handmade Cosmetic Alliance (HCA) representing more than 300,000 small handmade cosmetic companies throughout the U.S., opposes the Personal Care Products Safety Act, S. 1014, introduced by Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA) and co-sponsored by Senator Susan Collins (R-ME).

The proposed legislation, negotiated by large industry and a single consumer group and affiliate members, imposes burdensome fees, registration requirements and reporting mandates that will jeopardize more than 300,000 small handmade cosmetic companies in the U.S.

“The HCA along with other handmade cosmetic organizations support efforts to make meaningful policy changes to enhance cosmetic safety. However, subjecting small handmade cosmetic companies which operate with less than a handful of employees to onerous regulation is not only unfair and unprecedented, but creates regulatory requirements that will force businesses to close their doors, “ said Debbie May, Executive Director of the HCA.

The handmade cosmetic industry, comprised of largely women-owned and operated businesses, typically manufactures products in batches of 25-100 using largely food grade ingredients that can be found in any grocery store. In the U.S., handmade cosmetic products constitute less than a fraction of one percent of all products in the marketplace yet the quality of these products with food grade oils and ingredients are among the safest in the nation.

Senator Feinstein’s proposed legislation sets unprecedented burdens on small businesses, far exceeding current requirements food manufacturers and small farmers. As drafted, the Personal Care Products Safety Act would subject handmade cosmetic companies to “user fees” that are nearly ten times their market share and require each small handmade cosmetic business to file product registrations on several hundred soap, lotion, scrub batches produced in a given month.

The Handmade Cosmetic Alliance and its members will continue to support efforts to enhance cosmetic safety while ensuring that requirements are fair to small handmade cosmetic companies that create main street jobs and economic benefits to communities across the nation. 

Post-holiday Inventory Update

Happy New Year!  Hope you had a wonderful 2014, and best wishes for 2015. Thanks for buying us out of so many products for Hanukkah, and Christmas 2014. Dead Sea Mud Shampoo bars, Lavender Deodorants, Skin Regeneration Balm, Spearmint Deodorants and Aloe Rosemary Mint Shampoos are back in stock. Rose shampoo bars and Citrus Bay Rum patchouli shampoo bars will be ready January 21st. We are almost out of Neem shampoo bars, Patchouli soaps, Sesame Aloe shampoo bars, and Neem olive oil soaps. More neem shampoo and Patchouli soap will be ready January 28th after we sell out of the last couple that are currently available. We will be making more of the following sold out bars next week and the following week: Gardener's Soaps, Lavender Oatmeal soaps, Neem Olive oils soaps, Sesame aloe shampoo bars, and Lavender Vanilla Shampoo bars. These will be ready in early to mid February. Thanks for your patience!

Botanical Ingredient Spotlight: Benzoin Resin

One of our favorite natural aromatic ingredients for our Aquarian Bath shampoo bars and soaps is Benzoin resin. Benzoin has been important as an incense and medicinally since ancient times. It a botanical resin from the trees Styrax benzoin (Sumatra) or Styrax tonkinensis (Siam). Styrax trees grow in Thailand, Loas, Cambodia, Vietnam, Sumatra and Java. The dark sap of the tree is harvested starting when the tree is 3 years old and is harvested once a year over the next 7-9 years. Trees produce around 1 pound of resin per year. We are currently using Benzoin resin from Loas. When I list this ingredient in our soaps and shampoo bars on our website, I call it Benzoin Botanical resin so that it is not confused with Benzoin, which is a completely unrelated chemical compound. Benzoin resin has a sweet vanilla like aroma due to its unique composition of benzoic acid, cinnaminic acid, and smaller percentages of vanillin, styrol, styracin, phyenyl-prophyl, cinnamate and benzaldehyde. Cinnaminic acid is also found in shea butter and has a honey-like aroma. Benzaldehyde gives bitter almond it's characteristic almondy aroma. Different researchers have found varying chemistries between these two Styrax species, with some finding no cinnaminic acid in Siam varieties. The difference may be due to innate differences between the species, different extraction methods, different growing conditions, or the time of harvest of the resin.

This is our Lavender Vanilla Shampoo Bar. The dark color is from Benzoin resin.  We also make Lemon Vanilla Aloe Shampoo bars. Despite the sticky nature of Benzoin resin, the ingredient leaves no awkward build up in the hair or on the skin, even with hard water. It may provide a slightly volumizing effect for hair, but we need more customer feedback on that point to say with confidence.

Whenever you see an Aquarian Bath shampoo bar or soap listed with the name "Vanilla," we are using Benzoin resin as a substitute. The reason that we prefer Benzoin resin over Vanilla Oleoresin is because Benzoin resin has other very special properties. For many years Benzoin resin has been used an antioxidant for preserving fats and oils. What this means for soap and shampoo bars is that our "Vanilla" soaps and shampoo bars made with a high concentration of Benzoin resin have an extremely long shelf life. I have never seen one of our Vanilla soaps or shampoo bars become rancid, even those tested for years on the shelf. This makes the Vanilla bars very good candidates for ultra-prepared customers who like to buy in quantity. But why would anyone want to have old bars of soap hanging around? Actually, the soaps that have cured the longest, tend to stay harder and last longer in the shower. This is because more water has evaporated from the bar. Some people like to cure their soaps for a longer period of time after receiving them. You can do that very easily by storing your soaps naked in a dry well ventilated place that does not get too warm. Because of its great antioxidant qualities, we also use Benzoin resin in smaller amounts in many of our other soaps and shampoo bars to help extend the shelf life. We have even started adding a very small amount of Benzoin resin to our unscented Castile soaps to extend their shelf life. Benzoin is one of the top ingredients that I have suggested to soap makers in countries where there is high humidity and no air conditioning available. A testament to its ability to endure, the resin has been identified from a more than 200 year old shipwreck.

Vanilla Chai soaps are scented with Benzoin Resin, Clove bud and Cinnamon essential oils

Benzoin resin also acts as a fixative in natural perfumery. We use it in this capacity in our soaps and shampoos to better anchor lighter and more volatile essential oils. A few examples of these bars are Tea Tree, Key Lime Salt Soap and Root Beer Soap. Styrax tonkinensis is the species used most often in perfumery.  You can also find powdered benzoin listed as an ingredient for potpouri or incense formulas.

Thanks for reading our Benzoin resin ingredient spotlight. Hope you enjoyed it and be sure to check out one of our soaps or shampoo bars made with this ingredient by shopping at Aquarian Bath. Please feel welcome to leave a comment.

What is the difference between Aquarian Bath's two activated charcoal soap formulas?

Both of Aquarian Bath's charcoal soaps contain activated charcoal and bentonite clay. What is the difference between Aquarian Bath's Black Magic Clarifying charcoal soap and the Zeolite Detox soap?

The Black Magic soap is our original formula formulated for oily skin types. It includes shea butter and has a stronger lather than most of our other soaps. This means the formula is more cleansing for oily skin compared to our regular soaps. This soap is one good option for oily and acne skin types, though I personally tend to prefer our salt soaps for acne skin types. I say this is a personal preference, because many customers with acne skin types have reported good results with this formula.

The zeolite soap is a milder formula. It is okay for normal and even dry skin types, elderly and kids. It includes cocoa butter. The lather is milder, so not as strongly cleansing. In addition to the activated charcoal and bentonite clay, which is also found in our original charcoal soap this soap also contains fine zeolite powder. Some larger Zeolite particles are also included, which makes the bar a slightly exfoliating. Zeolite is a specialty ingredient that is used specifically for clean up of toxicity and deodorizing. Sometimes I use small pieces of our Zeolite Detox soap in our Zero Waste Soap Saver bags for washing vegetables. 

Here is a detailed summary comparing both bars:

Both bars: Organic Extra Virgin Olive oil, Organic Coconut oil, Olive Oil Pomace, Castor oil, Activated charcoal, bentonite clay, vegan, non-GMO, SLS-free, not tested on animals

Black Magic bar: strong lather for oily skin, raw unrefined Shea Butter

Zeolite Detox Bar: moderate lather for normal skin, formulated to be gentle enough for kids, elderly and those with dry skin, Organic Cocoa Butter, Zeolite, somewhat exfoliating

Patchouli Spotlight

Patchouli is a popular scented herb in the mint family whose Botanical name is Pogostemon cablin. Patchouli loves warm wet weather and grows well in India, Indonesia, parts of China, and South Florida. We grow it in Central Florida outdoors during the summer and bring it indoors during autumn and winter months. We've found that patchouli is one of the easiest herbs to grow indoors. With the warm rainy summer weather starting in Central Florida, late Spring or early Summer is the perfect time of year to start patchouli from seed. Patchouli is best known for it's use as incense or perfume, but it is also a valuable to use internally as a tea.

In perfumery, patchouli is known as a base note, which is also sometimes called a fixative. The earthy herbaceous scent blends especially well with lighter citrus scents helping them to last longer.  In a natural botanical perfume made with patchouli, you will smell it the most strongly as the other scents begin to fade. The patchouli aroma can linger for hours.

Many online herbal references indicate that the patchouli herb should not be taken internally, however it is recommended for use internally in the Traditional Chinese herbology. Patchouli in Chinese is known as "Hou Xiang," which translates "fragrance of the rainy season." This is because during humid summer months it is common for people to burn the incense to dispel or transform damp dirty smells. When one catches a head cold during a rainy summer season, it can be extremely difficult for the sinuses to clear. For this situation, patchouli tea can promote clear sinuses. For adults 5-10 grams of dried patchouli or 10-20 grams of fresh patchouli can be boiled briefly in water for 5-10 minutes. This decoction can be stored in the fridge and a cupful drunk warm 3 times per day. A tincture is also helpful. Pogostemon cablin is functionally interchangeable with Agastache rugosa, which is also known as Huo Xiang in Chinese. Dried Organic patchouli can be found at Mountain Rose Herbs. Patchouli essential oil, and other essential oils, should not be used internally, just the dried or fresh herb.

We use Patchouli essential oil in soaps, perfumes and shampoo bars, both by itself or to enhance the performance of other essential oils.

Love Stamped Valentine's Day Soaps

Orange Clove

We have some new soaps for your Valentine.  Hope you love them as much as we do. Choose from 3 popular scents and we will hand stamp them when you order.  

Available now at http://www.aquarianbath.com.

Patchouli

Vanilla Chai

Our New Cell Phone Sized Solar Powered Aquarian Bath Webserver Runs on 5 Watts

The new Aquarian Bath web store was recently upgraded and given a new home on one of these palm-sized machines which are built with the power efficient processors designed for smart phones. The open source Cubieboard ARM based integrated computer serves as the bare metal for a Debian Linux based web, database, and email server. Drawing just 3 Watts 5 Watts under load, it is one of the most power efficient computing platforms available, allowing us to run our new website on solar power, courtesy of industry leader SolarNetOne.  We upgraded our server since this article was published last week to include an extra hard drive which draws 2 Watts in order to keep up with holiday traffic, therefore the server draws 5 Watts instead of 3 Watts.

In comparison, the average video card in a gaming computer draws about 100 Watts by itself. Another 150 Watts is required for the main computer. 250 Watts is also about the average power consumption for a typical server. An average compact fluorescent light bulb draws 13 Watts, more than 2 times the power of our new e-commerce website.  

With this new hardware upgrade, we also updated the shopping cart, reorganized and categorized many of our items and sections. We hope you find it easier to navigate. You can now shop by the following main sections Soap (and Shampoo), Natural Skin Care, Herbal Products, Gift Ideas, Flaxseed Pillows and Reduce Plastic. 

For example, this Gingerbread and Star Anise 2013  holiday soap set can be found in the soap, Gift ideas, and Reduce plastic section.  Thanks for reading and please check out our new site.  

Why Child Labor, Exploited Workers, and "Sustainable" Palm Oil Don't Belong in Your Soap

"Sustainable" Palm oil is in the news again this week in Indonesia. Palm oil plantation workers demanded that the RSPO stop certifying Palm plantations as 'sustainable' when they are exploiting workers. This occurred outside the 11th annual RSP0 meeting. Workers Give Message to RSPO: Don’t Certify Abuse! - Labor is Not a Commodity. RSPO stands for Roundtable on Sustainable Palm oil. It is a creation of the Palm oil industry, and primarily includes major players in the industry. There is no outside overseer who monitors the sustainable certification. In July Bloomberg exposed child labor and forced labor on RSPO certified "sustainable" palm oil plantations. Palm oil is not just in many handmade soaps and shampoo bars, but also food products such as most cookie packages at the grocery store.

Palm oil is used in many soaps because it makes a hard long lasting soap with a mild gentle lather. It can basically be substituted 1 to 1 for lard in old fashioned soap recipes. The vegetarian palm oil may seem more ecofriendly than lard, especially with the vegan labeling, but pristine rain forest habitat is destroyed in the process, endangering Orangutans and human jungle habitat as well as eliminating some of the highest areas of biodiversity on the planet.

Aquarian Bath is able to make high quality handmade soaps without palm oil, because we instead formulate our soap and shampoo bar products with a balanced blend of Shea butter or Organic Cocoa butter together with Extra Virgin Olive oil and Coconut oil. Our soaps require a larger concentration of more expensive Shea Butter or Organic Cocoa butter compared to 'sustainable' palm oil which is much cheaper. The majority of our soaps are vegetarian, and we are happy to report that as we expanded our business in 2013 with the help of increase in sales we converted 4 of our non vegetarian formulas to vegetarian in 2013. We will be converting our last non vegetarian bar to vegan in Winter 2014.

Thank you to our customers for paying a little extra to purchase our palm free soaps and shampoo bars. We are always looking for ways to lessen our ecological impact.  Look for more announcements on that topic in the near future regarding our new solar e-commerce initiative and a move towards certified Organic fabric with our Organic Flaxseed and Organic herbal neck pillows.

New Soaps in Stock!

Daytona Beach Scrubby Sand Soap  This is a hard hand soap for super dirty hands.

We have lots of new soaps in stock.  Some have been on the site for a couple of weeks and others are new today.  This is the first time we've shown them off here on the blog.  I hope you'll find one you like.  Find all our soap on the main Aquarian Bath website.

Orange Clove Soap with red Moroccan Clay.  Hand or Body Soap

Root Beer Soap lightly scented with a pure essential oil blend.  Nice body soap!

Jasmine Rose Soap.  Must have for floral fans.  Get ready to swoon.

Orange Patchouli Hand Soap Made with a high concentration of Coconut oil,
 this  is a long lasting, strong lathering bar of soap.  Naturally colored, of
course, with red Moroccan Clay and Organic Cocoa Powder

Wedding Pictures With Our New "love" Stamp for Soap Favors

Friday night we had our 10 year anniversary.  To celebrate we had an informal renewal of vows ceremony at the beach in Ormond Beach.  Our wedding colors slowly evolved into yellow and black starting with my choice of a dress color that could moderately resist potential smudging from little flower girl hands.

Cory & Scott president & vice president at Aquarian Bath

Scott found a black shirt with a yellow-gold tie.  The girls found matching dresses that they liked with black and some yellow.

With goldenrod in bloom this time of year, I had to have Solidago for our bouquets.

The day before the wedding I got a new batch of custom made soap stamps in.  One of them was a new 'love' stamp.  I stamped up some of our Activated Charcoal and Bentonite Clay Soaps with it, put the soaps in our biodegradable cellophane bags, and added some yellow ribbon.  Not your typical soap wedding favors, but they were a perfect fit for our event.  

I will stamp up some different colored soaps as examples for custom wedding soap favors later this month.  

New Hemp Soap & Shampoo Bar Gift Sets from Aquarian Bath and Giveaway

These are our new Hemp Soap and Shampoo Gift sets.  Each gift set comes with one of our Peppermint, Lavender, Patchouli body soaps, 2 cedar soap decks, and your choice from one of our 4 hemp oil shampoo bars.   We have Citrus Bay Rum Patchouli (above) with red Moroccan Clay.

We have our original Patchouli hemp shampoo bar with French green clay.

We have a new Lavender- Patchouli Hemp shampoo bar with Rhassoul Clay.

We also have the very popular Rose Hemp Shampoo bar.

You could win one of these gift sets at Beth Terry's Plastic Free Life blog.  She is taking entries through the end of the week.  Tell her we sent you!  She has a great blog which is very informative regarding reducing plastic in your life. 

In a Radioactive World Substitute Zeolite for Almond in your Bath & Body Recipes - modified Miracle Grains Recipe included

Since the triple meltdown and subsequent China Syndrome event at Fukushima Daiichi, we must be very careful as to choosing foods and bath and body product ingredients which have tendencies to bioaccumulate radionuclides.  Essentially, these are foods that have a chemical affinity for certain radioactive particles in the air, water, or soil, and will tend to accumulate these particles.  Generally speaking, the higher up the food chain you eat, the more radioactivity you will be exposed to internally through your food, but there are notable exceptions.

California strawberries, pistachios, almonds, and a range of other products have all shown elevated levels of Cesium-137, one of the aerosolized radionulides released en masse during the failure and immediate aftermath of the Daiichi reactor failures.  Further, the flow of contamination into the ocean and atmosphere from the failed reactors continues, with the accident remaining uncontained, and the infrastructure which maintains cooling to the spent fuel losing structural integrity.  Practically, this means that contaminated food is
not limited to 2011 harvests, as the source of the contamination continues to spread it across N. America.  The disaster is far from over.



The contamination being released into the atmosphere in an ongoing fashion begins a continual circuit around the pole, riding a weather pattern known as the tropopause.  Evidence of this contamination is abundant, as one need only watch the cold fronts sweeping south across N. America carrying contaminated air, and correlate that data with Geiger counter readings from publicly available monitoring networks.

California is a major producer of Almonds, and is also one of the areas hard hit by radioactive fallout. Radioactive fallout concentrations are predicted to become increasingly more toxic on the west coast of North America according to scientific models.  For this reason, Almonds is an food and body product ingredient that we have decided to avoid in our diet and in our formulas.  No raw almonds, Almond milk, Almond oil, Almond butter, or Almond Kernel meal.  Although I have not seen results published regarding Apricot Kernel meal published, we are reticent to use this ingredient, because Almonds and Apricots are both in the Prunus genus. I would be happy to learn if there is evidence that Apricot kernels do not accumulate Cesium similar to Almonds.   For body products requiring mild abrasive scrubbiness of Almond or Apricot kernel meal, we are now using powdered Zeolite as a substitute.

Zeolite is a microporous mineral, meaning it has regular patterns of holes in its molecular structure, and has the characteristic ability to chealate, or bond with and hold, radionuclides. It has been used in water purification, remediation of soil, and most commonly in laundry detergent and as horse stall freshener.

One very famous body product recipe which includes Almond Meal is Rosemary Gladstar's Miracle Grains Recipe.  It is often used as a gentle soap alternative, and  it can be modified with other herbs.  We found that coarse Zeolite powder is similar in texture to coarsely ground Almonds and makes a great 1:1 substitute in Rosemary's recipe. 

Modified Miracle Grains Recipe with Zeolite

• 1/8 cup Zeolite - moderately coarse powder
• 1/8 cup ground Organic Lavender Flower Buds
• 1/8 c ground Organic Rose petals
• 1 c ground oatmeal
• 2 cups white kaolin clay
• A few drops of essential oil, we used Rose Geranium

This also makes a nice scrub which can be used as a natural microdermabrasion, when you modify this recipe to use a high concentration of Zeolite and a lower concentration of clay,

Soap Giveaway from Aquarian Bath

This week we are starting to think about stocking up on soaps for Holiday gift sets.  As we were clearing out room and making more space for holiday soaps, I found a a few nice end bars for giveaway prizes.  These are bars that a slightly smaller than our usual bars.   We will choose 2 winners to receive 1 Evergreen Woodland Soap and 1 Mint Lavender & Patchouli Hemp oil soap.  These soaps are vegan and made with pure essential oils.  

US residents 18 and older may enter to win below using the rafflecopter widget.  Contest ends 8/10/13 at 12 A.M.

a Rafflecopter giveaway