I.) SOAPS II.) GENERAL PRODUCT INQUIRIES III.) Shipping IV.) Wholesale
I.) SOAPS Is that cheese? Nope, it’s soap.
Palm oil is one of the base ingredients in many of your soaps, but you say your soaps are vegan. How can that be?
We are well aware of some of the horrific circumstances that result from irresponsible sourcing of palm oil – major animal welfare crises, deforestation contributing to rapid climate change, labor exploitation and human rights violations to name just a few. These tragedies are not something we ever intend on supporting, which is why we use only responsibly-sourced, organic sustainable palm oil.
Palm oil sourcing contributes to a systematic genocide of orangutans. Why support it at all, sustainable or not? Orangutans inhabit the jungles of Borneo and Sumatra in Southeast Asia only. Our source of sustainable organic palm oil comes from a mixed species farm in Brazil where there are no orangutans found living in the wild, so by being conscientious of the location of our palm oil source, we avoid the animal welfare issues surrounding orangutans altogether.
We support the use of responsibly sourced organic & sustainable palm oil because its use has many advantages. Palm oil comes from the pulp of the fruits found on oil palms, which is the highest yielding of all the vegetable oil-producing crops. This makes oil palms enormously efficient sources of renewable energy. If we all were to abandon palm oil altogether, this would necessitate replacing it with other types of vegetable oils that are less efficient; which, in return would take up more land to produce the same amount of oil. Oil palms produce 4-10 times more vegetable oil than any other crop per unit of cultivated land. Abandoning this high-yielding crop and its potential when sustainably and ethically harvested, seems irresponsible as overcrowding and climate change are becoming more and more pressing issues in this modern age.
How should I store my soap? Handmade soap is always best kept dry between showers. If you keep it dry between showers, it will last longer and stay nice and dense. Never leave it sitting in a pool of water.
How long will a bar of your soap typically last? We’ve had customers say that our bars of soap last them anywhere between 2 weeks and 3 months from the start of their use. It really all depends on how often you shower and how dry you keep the bar between your showers. For those who say our bars only last 2 weeks, those customers tend to be the very cleanly types who shower 2-3 times a day every day. For those who say our bars last them months and months, those tend to be our punkish, shower-once-a-week sort of clientele.
II.) GENERAL PRODUCT INQUIRIES What is the shelf life of your products? Depends on the product –
SOAPS: Use within one year. You may have heard that handmade soap only gets better with age. This is definitely true in certain respects: the more a bar of soap cures, the milder and longer lasting it is; bars of soap that are cured for longer are also believed to possess better lathers. We have yet to see one of our handmade soaps go rancid, but it is possible. Part of the beauty of natural handmade soap is that it is packed with antioxidants that can naturally prolong their shelf life and it also has a high pH that can inhibit microbial growth. Because of this, the addition of synthetic preservatives and stabilizers is simply not necessary. Unlike many of those big name commercial bars of soap, our soaps are not meant to sit on a shelf for years and years; we like to keep things fresh, new, and in season – the way nature intends – so use that bar within one year! After that growing season is over, ditch it and get something fresh! We’re under the school of thinking that the soil is alive. When the soil’s healthy, the plants are healthy, when the plants are healthy the people and animals are healthy, when the people and animals are healthy, the atmosphere is too.
BODY BUTTERS: Use within 6 months. We don’t use any stabilizers in our body butters, so in the heat of summer, they may appear softer or, at times when we’re selling in extreme heat, they might even appear totally melted into a liquid, once they are brought back to room temperature, and mixed, they settle back into that luscious, thick body butter texture.
LIP BUTTERS: Use within 1 year.
LOTIONS: Use within 3 months.
SALVES: Use within 1 year.
HERBS: Use within 1 year.
MAKE-UP: Use within 6 months.
INSECT REPELLENT: Use within 6 months.
PURE ALOE VERA & WITCH HAZEL: Use within 1 month.
OILS: Use within 1 year.
Are your products certified organic? We only use certified organic base oils in all of our products. Every herb we use is grown without synthetic chemical intervention. There is literally nothing artificial found in any of our products, no fillers – only high quality, wholesome, non-toxic natural ingredients. We are firm believers that organic is the best way and we do meet the criteria for USDA organic certification with all of our products, but we are not yet certified organic. It is a lengthy, costly road to USDA organic certification, but definitely a path we aspire to walk down in the nearest possible future. We are still yet a tiny, little micro- seedling business chugging along at modest means, but growing taller by the day thanks to the warm rays that all of our beloved customers shine on us. You are our livelihood – when you’re healthy, we’re healthy; this is why we use only the utmost quality natural ingredients in your products and we do our best to keep them at obtainable pricings.
Do you test on animals? No way! We test on ourselves.
III.) SHIPPING When will my order ship? Most orders ship 2-4 weeks from their date of online purchase. However, there is an exception to this if we are promoting a "guaranteed delivery" date for a holiday, in which case, our turnaround time will be before that Holiday to ensure that your items arrive in time as promised.
It is quite unusual, but due to occasional high volumes, orders can take up to 6 weeks to ship. If you need your order to arrive by a certain date, email us before placing the order and we can confirm with you whether or not it is feasible. We are always happy to accommodate any special requests whenever possible!
Why does Shipping take sooooooo long? I live in NJ...
Please bear in mind that when you are purchasing goods through our site, you are purchasing a handmade product here in the good ol' United States of America. Often, we handmake a whole batch of that product especially for you when you order it! With us, you are not buying a product off Amazon that was manufactured overseas, shipped halfway around the world to sit in a giant warehouse here in the states for months at a time in quantities by the thousands, that when you purchase one, gets plopped onto a conveyor belt by a robot and sent off in a UPS truck 3 seconds from the moment you completed checkout. While in some ways, that's a very cool thing, but in some ways mass production is not always the best way to do things. With our products, we are scaling down the process to offer a better, more original product.
We handcraft our goods in small, careful batches to maintain quality over quantity and doing so does take time. We package our own products. We carefully assemble all your orders, maintaining control over quality. Unlike the robots at Amazon, we often plop in freebies, samples we think you might like, appreciation gifts, and handwritten notes. We hope that from this, our customer can take with them the consciousness that this delightful product they just received was made especially for them by another person.
When you order with us online, we also make your products fresh for you so you can enjoy them for as long as possible as most of our consumable products (the stuff you use on your body, like soap, lotions, etc.) are made from live, organic ingredients that -- like all good things in life -- can perish over time. We want you to enjoy your time with our products and for them to remain fresh for as long as possible. Unlike many big box warehouses, it's not our goal to ship out the oldest unit on the shelf to get it off our hands before it expires. It's our intention to ship the BEST product off to you.
Knock on wood, but since 2013 when we've started, we've always had orders in our queue that we are chipping away at. People put in orders for wholesale, favors for events, retail orders from our shop, and of course always here on our site. The processing time for your order largely depends on the orders put in before yours that we are presently chipping away at. We are a small, but very devoted staff of people working hard as humanly possible to get everyone's orders out as soon as humanly possible!
Since we started this website back in 2013, there has never been a lull in our order queue. There is almost always a customer waiting for their order that got in before yours. The reason it can take up to 6 weeks to ship out your order is simply based on the volume at the time of your order and order volumes fluxate so we say up to 6 weeks as a safety net, but normally you can expect an average processing time of 2-4 weeks. We are always working to make this faster, but in the meantime, please be patience with us as we get everything together for your order, we promise to always make it worth the wait. If you ever feel it wasn't or dissatisfied in anyway, please reach out to us and we will always do our best to make it right and to keep you happy. Without you, the customer, there'd be no us, Big Spoon Little Spoon Naturals.
IV.) WHOLESALE Do you Wholesale? Yes! Email us for a copy of our line sheet - BigSpoonLittleSpoonNaturals@gmail.com.