Sal Suds is a mild detergent, and the Castile and Organic Sugar Soap are soaps. The difference is that soaps are “the salt of a fatty acid”, which means they're made in a one-step reaction directly from oils--organic plant oils in our case (coconut, palm kernel, olive, hemp seed, and jojoba). Sal Suds are a more complicated reaction, which still starts with coconut oil but has a lot more steps. They both are excellent cleaning agents, but the soaps are more nourishing for skin designed for the body, but the Sal Suds is better in hard water and in grease fighting. Here's a deeper dive into the difference from Lisa Bronner's blog.

Sodium benzoate was added to the Sal Suds formula to help preserve the product and maintain quality. Most cleaning products use preservatives such as methylchoroisothiazolinone, methylisothiazolinone, or benzylisothiazolinone which can be irritating to the skin and may pose ecotoxicological hazards. Some cleaning products use phenoxyethanol as a preservative but there might be a risk of 1,4 dioxane as a byproduct. Sodium benzoate, the preservative for Sal Suds, is even safe enough to use in food preservation and scored with a lower risk profile on EWG’s Skin Deep database than other preservatives.

While high concentrations of some essential oils can be toxic to some animals (some animals like birds and cats are more sensitive than others), products containing essential oil concentrations of less than 1–2% are generally considered nontoxic if used according to label directions. Rest assured that the essential oils in our Sal Suds Biodegradable Cleaner falls within this range. When used according to our recommendations, these products will be diluted even further and should pose no threat to your animal.

Although many customers use Sal Suds around their animals with great success, we understand that health is very important, so we always recommend that you consult with your local veterinarian should you have any concerns. Nonetheless, if you have animals that are known to be sensitive to essential oils or are uncomfortable using a product with essential oils on your pet, we encourage you to consider our Baby Unscented Castile Soap variety as it is our Pure-Castile Soap formula but contains zero essential oils. We also invite you to check out our blog post, Pet Care with Dr. Bronner's, for further information about pet care with our soaps.