Saturday 17 April 2010

I bought a bottle of 1L dishwashing liquid last Friday. It claimed to be "natural" because it is degradable and do not affect aquatic life.

It is green and smell a little bit 'pandan'. I (we?) used to have a myth that natural washing liquid produce far more little bubbles than the normal commercial one, and less bubbles mean "not so clean". Apparently, it is just a myth~

36 of us visiting the home-business natural soap manufacturer at Lahat, Perak. The factory situated at the end of a long and narrow lorong in a chinese village. The owner Mr Tan, learn about natural soap during his visit to Minamata, Japan. He is also an environmental activist for the ARE incident more than 16 years back.

We have a brief introduction from Mr Tan outside his factory. For your information, natural soap is made from edible oil (coconut oil and palm oil), which turn acidic to alkaline and degraded in a very short time. It means, we can use the dishwashing liquid to wash vegetables and the leftover to water your plants.

There are total 4 products: shampoo, dishwashing liquid, bar soap and clothes washing powder. They are all made from coconut oil + palm oil + lye (NaOH) + water. We glad to have Mr Tan's daughter-in-law to explain on the manufacturing process after a light meal.



The mixture of coconut oil, palm oil and lye (is only in powder and bar soap) is cooked at about 70C in this machine.



This is the mixture of dishwashing liquid/shampoo after cooked. Waiting to be colded and filtered.



This is the mixture of bar soap. Waiting to be dried and molded.



It is almost same for the washing powder. After dried, put it in "meat chopper" machine to make it smaller pieces before blended it into powder. Of course the humidity must be well controlled so that it doesn't too dry to fly anywhere neither too humid to wet the packaging because they do not use plastic bag to pack the powder.



To be really care about the environmental, they fully utilized the plastic bottle before it goes to recycle. Besides, no nice packaging too. The products are highly supported by the local community. However, it is not certified by SIRIM because there is no such soap making formula in their database. It is only get certified by Japanese Industrial Standards (JIP).

We ended our visit with group photo session. Each of us is giving a lemon grass flavor bar soap as souvenir.

This is Mr Tan. A passionate environmentalist.

The group photo (Mr Tan & Mrs Tan)


There is a story behind....shhhhhhh~



7 comments:

Azman Jaafar said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
suzsuz said...

helo, just have one question for u.. how may i get my hands on this natural detergents and soap? where are they sold? tq..

kampus sejahtera said...

Hi, according to Mr Tan, they distribute to almost all organic shop in Malaysia.

encik sabun said...

is it ? But why i didnt saw it at anywhere in terengganu?

Kampus sejahtera, may i ask, what is the current status usage of nonylphenol 10? why its not banned yet?

Andrew Tan said...

Hi! Do you realize that there seems to be quite a number of grammatical errors on this particular blog entry? Do pardon me for barging in like this, but I really need to correct some of the errors since it makes it really hard and confusing for some of us to read about the natural soap manufacturer.

What if an ang moh drops by to read your article? I think he will run away before he finishes reading one third of your blog entry.

Here are some of the common mistakes a Year Six student wouldn't make:

It is degradable and does not affect aquatic life. (Not "do")

It is green and smells a little bit like Pandan.
(It "smells" not it "smell")

Natural washing liquid produces far more little bubbles
(Not "produce")

The factory is situated at the end of a long and narrow lorong
(Not "The factory situated")

The owner, Mr Tan learned about natural soap during his visit to Minamata, Japan.
(Not "learn")

We had a brief introduction from Mr. Tan outside his factory.
(Not "We have")

Natural soap is made from edible oil (coconut and palm oil) which turns from acidic to alkaline and degrades in a very short time.

(Not "turn acidic to alkaline" and not "degraded" in a very short time)

There are a total of 4 products
(Not "There are total 4 products")

We were glad to have Mr Tan's daughter-in-law
("We were glad", not "We glad")

There are more of those mistakes which I think will take up the maximum word limit. (if there is one)
Here are some of the funnier ones consisting of sentences hanging in midair.
(I listed the original text - try correcting it yourself.)

36 of us visiting the home-business natural soap manufacturer at Lahat, Perak.
(Visited not visiting)

Each of us is giving a lemon grass flavor bar soap as souvenir.
(Were you giving away soaps as souvenirs or were you given soaps by the manufacturer as souvenirs?)

Of course the humidity must be well controlled so that it doesn't too dry to fly anywhere neither too humid to wet the packaging because they do not use plastic bag to pack the powder.
(Hehe.......Try translating this to
Malay and then back to English using Google Translator. Makes more sense, doesn't it?)

To be really care about the environmental, they fully utilized the plastic bottle
(Don't you mean to be really caring towards the environment?)

Without any doubt, the response you gave to suzsuz contains yet another error.
(Hint: It has something to do with "all organic shop")

One last thing. If you think English is my first language, then you are most certainly wrong.
I studied in a Chinese-medium school and yes, I speak Mandarin most of the time.

English is more like a second language to me but I find it crucial that everything here should be written in proper, grammatically confident English.

After all, most of the people who visited your blog are presumably students (USM students, to be exact), who happened to drop by your blog after clicking on the link in the healthy campus website.

You wouldn't want your students to write like this and yet score an "A" in academic English writing, would you?

Angeline Chia said...

Hi, may I know the name of the facility and the contact info.? I would like to arrange a field trip for the boys brigate company in my church.

Thanks.

santo said...
This comment has been removed by the author.