Dr. Bronner’s became the soap for every subculture | Hacker News Reader

Dr. Bronner’s became the soap for every subculture

latimes.com

21 pointsjaredwiener11 comments

I love Bronners. It's economical, gentle on my skin, and I love the refreshing feeling the peppermint flavor gives you.

Plus I love reading the labels in the shower. All one!

I do, too. It's my favorite soap by far and has been for a very long time.

I was aware of the Dr. Bronner's story, and it's utterly fascinating. Somehow, knowing it makes me enjoy the soap even more.

Their bar soap is also wrapped in paper (and claims to be recycled).

It’s challenging finding a bar soap without plastic packaging.

...flavor?

You don’t drink it?

Without knowing a whole lot about it, admittedly, I've always speculated that the vast number of different soaps and cleaning products that we buy are completely unnecessary. I've started buying Bronners or other concentrated soaps in bulk and using them for various things. Is there a good place on the web to get home recipes on making this stuff into different products (like a shampoo/conditioner for example). As for hand soap, imo nothing beats raw castille soap as it gets my hands super clean compared to most store bought hand soaps.

I had been using EO Peppermint & Tea Tree for quite a few years but haven't been able to get that in the UK for a little while. I have tried Bronners soaps a couple of times and found it a bit thin and and also not that great unfortunately.

I've an issue with my skin and the EO soap is one of the few I didn't react to, even long term. I think I started reacting to Bronners but the bottle didn't last long, unlike the EO one, so didn't really confirm if I did or not.

Reading the article it seems quite a story and the world is a better place for characters like that and the soaps are widely available in the UK.

Kind of a weird guy. No relation to Bronner's Christmas World, but came from the same part of Bavaria. The soap is great and cheap, and, so long as the family doesn't screw taht up, there will be plenty of jobs for the fourth generation

Definitely weird. He appears (briefly) in a weird movie too: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087817/ I bet you wouldn't expect that Dr Bronner, Bill Murray, Eddie Fisher and the tough guy from Reservoir Dogs are all in one film.

What a story, thanks for sharing. I didn't know his parents were killed in the holocaust. He was sent to a psych hospital after sermonizing in Chicagoland. I wonder what he must have sounded like, and whether his soap bottle scripture is a toned down version of his prior fury. Luckily he escaped to LA and started a soap business. The business continues to this day, trying to be as radically moral as its label! I wonder what percentage of companies actually walk this moral walk. Good for them.

> I wonder what he must have sounded like

I believe you can find recordings of the original Dr. Bronner online. I seem to remember hearing a radio program about him and they played back some of his recording. To my ears he sounded like a fiery young man having to speak through the body of an older man. :)

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