Going back to the bar  #raisethebar

We are passionate about our planet and are increasingly concerned about the damage humans are doing to our environment and the wildlife that lives in it.

Over the last two years we have focused lots of time and learning on how we can help make a difference, by making even the smallest of changes.

We wanted to educate our school and local community on how they could make every day changes and help fight the cause against plastic pollution. In bathrooms using liquid soap is the norm for so many now.  We decided a practical solution to this would be to encourage people to go back to the bar. What better way to do this than creating our own botanical bar of soap. 

Making the bar

Samanatha Worsey runs a local natural skincare company that works hard to be free from as much plastic as possible.  She came to Wicor to show us how soap is made. We had a workshop so we could learn what different oils and butter could go into our soap. The range included olive oil, cocoa butter, sea buckthorn oil and coconut oil and no palm oil!

Our main ingredient is black peppermint. We have grown kilos of this plant in our school allotment. We have been involved in every stage of the growing, taking cuttings, divisions, growing on, planting out and watering. Classes and volunteers have spent time harvesting, washing and hanging the mint to dry. 

The mint leaves have to be stripped from the stems in order for them to be dried and used through our soap.

In order to gain a zingy, fresh and minty aroma from our bar, one of our essential ingredients is glycerine. The glycerine is an ingredient that we have infused with our fresh mint straight from the gardens. We infused this by packing a Kilner jar a third full with mint leaves and then filled to the top with glycerine. The jars were taken round to each class in the school to be tilted 3 times daily over a 4 week period. During this time the leaves changed colour and we had to resist opening the jar!  

After testing these for their qualities Samantha worked to create us a beautiful bespoke recipe which was then tested by her cosmetic scientist.

The Bar

Year 6 were asked to create some design ideas for packaging our soap. They each put their thoughts on paper and a graphic designer pulled elements together to create a mint themed, beautiful wrapping that would appeal to a wide audience. Samantha already follows a strong ethos of using little or no plastic with her business. Her soap is wrapped with a wax paper and then with a strong paper wrap finished with parcel cord tie. This fits with our soap giving no waste at all. 

The bar after being produced needs to have at least 4 weeks to cure before being wrapped. As Samantha explained making the soap, saponification happens after the chemical process of mixing oils with an alkali and the soap will not be safe to touch until it has cured.

We decided on the name of Allotmint for our soap which contain lots of mint grown from our very own allotment!