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OUR VALUES

With a sustained pace of life, permanent stress, work in often difficult conditions, the use of many chemicals in food, hygiene products and food industry, our skin becomes increasingly damaged. The ubiquity of synthetic chemicals in the products of everyday life becomes inevitable. This trend has not left cosmetics untouched. Most care products such as shampoos, shower gels, creams or toothpastes are in fact, in large part, complicated cocktails of synthetic substances, of which the beneficial effects are increasingly questionable. Even cosmetics presented as being of natural or organic origin, often contain only trace concentrations of natural substances derived from organic farming; the remainder is usually a formulation based on synthetic chemicals. At Saponlabs, our philosophy is to try to replace as many synthetic chemicals as possible with truly natural substances obtained from plants. We strive to concentrate our research on the physico-chemical properties of binders, preservatives, thickeners and surfactants with the aim of substituting synthetic molecules with natural extracts from plants or algae. For example, synthetic thickeners such as carbomers can be largely replaced with seaweed extracts containing trace elements or by rubber derivatives, which are natural constituents of certain trees and bushes. In our quest for the best natural formulations, we apply a combination of modern chemistry and cutting edge analytical techniques.

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WHY NATURAL?

SaponLabs' scientific activity focuses mainly on active constituents of natural products. We strongly believe that natural compounds are much healthier and skin-friendlier than products of chemical synthesis, however sophisticated it may be. Surprisingly, the most common component of synthetic cosmetic formulations, SLES (sodium lauryl ether sulfate), was synthesized for the first time only a few decades ago. In comparison, natural products have been developed and optimized by nature over millions of years. Humankind’s interest in cosmetics is much older than the cosmetic industry. Our ancestors applied natural products for different medical and cosmetic purposes without having any notion of atoms and molecules. Consequently, their knowledge was based on trials and errors. At SaponLabs, we continue to complement this empirical knowledge accumulated in old traditional recipes with the state of the art modern scientific research.

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