Our Story
It started because we could not find it
The change began with an older brother. As a teenager he came home one day and announced he would not be eating meat any more, on environmental grounds. The family was skeptical, and he did not budge. Over about six months, all of us moved to a plant-based lifestyle.
It did not stop at the menu. Once you start reading labels for one reason, you cannot stop reading them for the others, and the household cabinet turned out to be the harder problem. Our family has been making natural skin care since 1978, so we knew what to look for. We still could not find a cleanser that met all of it at once.
At some point complaining about the gap stopped being useful, and we decided to make our own instead. Whole Naturals Pure-Castile Soap launched in 2022. That is the whole origin. There is no clever story behind it.
Why palm oil free, specifically
Palm oil is in most liquid soap, usually listed under a name that does not look like palm oil. Avoiding it is harder and more expensive than using it, so it is worth saying plainly why we bothered.
Palm cultivation drives deforestation on a scale that contributes to climate change. Clearing land by burning produces extreme air pollution across whole regions. And the habitat that disappears belongs to orangutans, elephants, rhinos and tigers, several of them critically endangered.
None of that is unique knowledge. It is why the issue exists at all, and it is the reason a certification we pay for exists on our bottle.
The first castile soap in the USA certified palm oil free
Our Nature's Gold Collection is the first castile soap in the USA to carry third-party palm-oil-free certification from POFCAP, an independent body, not a claim we made about ourselves. That distinction matters, because anyone can print “palm oil free” and nobody has to prove it.
The same soap is EWG Verified™, Certified Vegan, Non-GMO and Certified Fair Trade. It is never tested on animals.
What we put in it
An organic blend of prickly pear, argan, jojoba, sweet almond and hemp oils, with coconut, olive, castor and apricot kernel oil, all USDA-certified organic. Five of those are there for their vitamins and antioxidants, and the blend is hypoallergenic and non-pore-clogging. There are no artificial detergents, no synthetic dyes and no foaming agents, and the finished soap is biodegradable.
Because the oils are organic and unrefined, the color shifts a little from batch to batch with the season and the harvest. Bottles run from nearly clear to a light gold. A soap that looks identical every time usually has colorants in it.
How it is made
The olive oil is cold-pressed, extracted at low temperature, which keeps more of what was in the olive than heat extraction does. It is also unhydrogenated. Hydrogenation adds hydrogen to a liquid oil to make it solid at room temperature, and we do not do it.
The oils are combined with an alkali, which converts them into soap and glycerin. That reaction is saponification, it is how every true soap has ever been made, and the alkali is entirely consumed by it, which is why our label states that none remains. A liquid soap like ours is made with potassium hydroxide. Bar soap is a different reaction with a different alkali, which is why the answer to the question we are asked most often is no, this is not meant to be turned into a bar.
Every bottle is stamped with a production code before it leaves us, so any batch can be traced back.
One bottle, nine recipes
The same bottle becomes body wash, hand soap, facial cleanser, shampoo, dish soap, fruit and veggie wash, a multi-purpose cleaning spray, shaving lather, laundry detergent and pet shampoo. Every bottle has the nine dilution recipes printed on the label, and each one is written up in full on our blog.
That is not a marketing count. It is the practical consequence of a soap with nothing added to it. No fragrance to clash with food, no detergent to leave on skin, nothing that limits it to one job.
Read the label. Ours included.
The habit that started all of this is the one thing we would pass on: read what is actually in a product, and make an intelligent choice about it.
That applies to us as much as to anyone else. Our full ingredient list is printed on the bottle and repeated on every product page. The certifications are from outside bodies you can look up. Nothing here asks you to take our word for it, because the whole company exists because we were not willing to take anyone else's.
Who we are
Whole Naturals is a second-generation family business, making natural skin care since 1978, run today by Alex and Yohan and operated by WNLS Inc. The soap is manufactured in the USA, and we are the only authorized seller of it.
If you want to reach a person about an order, a dilution, or buying in bulk, write to alex@whole-naturals.com. Someone reads every message. There are more answers on the FAQ page, and wholesale is handled on the wholesale page.
— Alex and Yohan
Tradition, Experience, and Knowledge
Using our family’s traditional experience and knowledge, we created our own natural soap. As a family-owned small business, we work with farmers all over the world, careful to choose the highest quality, pure and natural plant-derived ingredients, conscious of environmental impact. To demonstrate transparency, we maintain a strict standard of testing by respected third-party organizations on all ingredients.
The Magic from the Mediterranean
Our Nature’s Gold Liquid Castile Soap is 2-3x more concentrated than regular soaps and cleansers. It is a versatile soap that you can safely use for your children, pets, and your entire household. Our blend of healing oils has been chosen carefully from family farmers in the Mediterranean region. Our family continues to use the Old-World traditions to produce our Nature’s Gold Liquid Castile Soap that you can trust for your skin and beyond.
For external use only. Keep out of reach of children. Discontinue use if irritation, redness or discomfort occurs.
