I’m not wowed by VDH soap, but find it to be an excellent performer. It whips up thick and nice very quickly with a badger brush, but lacks in the scent department.
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Seen on Amazon VdH page
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I’m not wowed by VDH soap, but find it to be an excellent performer. It whips up thick and nice very quickly with a badger brush, but lacks in the scent department.
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I tried doing an additional quick touch up shave with VDH Luxury just and I managed to get it to lather decently- but it was alot of work and my 22mm German badger brush only produced enough lather for only about two passes. Unlike the tallow based soaps I have tried (Williams, Creighton's soap bases), VDH doesn't give up its cream easily or seem to soften over time. But the quality of the lather is good and it isn't as harsh as some other soaps.
You have to be careful with this soap because the lather can't thin as much as a tallow style soap, or you'll get a rough shave. It's really more like some of the synthetic surfactant-based shaving creams I have used, just in a very hard form.
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That was me, not Gary, you were quoting, BTW.
Some plastic razors can be recycled. I know some Whole Foods are recycling plastic razors, and they sell the Renew brand of razors that are made from post-consumer waste, like yogurt cups.
I have seen some disposable razors that use "bio-plastics" and will biodegrade over time. For instance, this razor:
Arko is decent, but Palmolive is a better value as I liked the way my skin felt afterwards. Plus the scent is more generally liked by everyone.
Never had an issue with VDH.
CzechCzar
Use the Fat, Luke!
The soap that I like is objectively better than the soap that you like
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Technically, VDH isn't really a soap, as the ingredients list shows. Polyethelene glycol, and a few surfactants/foaming agents do not "soap" make. Soap is a chemical term for the result of the chemical reaction of a fatty acid and either lye or potash (or some combination of the two).
It's a shaving product, and it lathers, but it's not really "soap."
As for being better for the environment, DE shaving is definitely better than cartridge razor shaving. DE blades can be put into an Altoid Smalls tin, sealed, and thrown right into the recycling bin. The blades and the container are fully recyclable.
On the flip side, the plastics from cartridge razors and particularly from disposable razors makes up a fair proportion (can't remember the exact percent) of landfill waste and is a blight to the environment.
As far as shaving and the environment goes, nothing beats straight razors. Currently I shave with a Feather SS shavette, which, in my opinion, is a close second. It uses replaceable blades, but they last a good 10-20 shaves each. The holder will last me the rest of my life and probably the life of my children and grandchildren, and thus is never disposed. I shave four times a week, so that's 208 shaves a year. At 10 shaves each I'm recycling a total of 20 very small, very thin blades per year. An Altoid Smalls container can probably hold about 100 of these blades, so in total I'd be recycling one Altoid Smalls container every 5 years even if I replaced the blade every 6th shave (which I don't; I usually go longer). That's incredibly environmentally friendly. In that amount of time a typical disposable razor shaver would have contributed probably around 250 plastic razors to a landfill.
It's a shaving product, and it lathers, but it's not really "soap."
As for being better for the environment, DE shaving is definitely better than cartridge razor shaving. DE blades can be put into an Altoid Smalls tin, sealed, and thrown right into the recycling bin. The blades and the container are fully recyclable.
On the flip side, the plastics from cartridge razors and particularly from disposable razors makes up a fair proportion (can't remember the exact percent) of landfill waste and is a blight to the environment.
As far as shaving and the environment goes, nothing beats straight razors. Currently I shave with a Feather SS shavette, which, in my opinion, is a close second. It uses replaceable blades, but they last a good 10-20 shaves each. The holder will last me the rest of my life and probably the life of my children and grandchildren, and thus is never disposed. I shave four times a week, so that's 208 shaves a year. At 10 shaves each I'm recycling a total of 20 very small, very thin blades per year. An Altoid Smalls container can probably hold about 100 of these blades, so in total I'd be recycling one Altoid Smalls container every 5 years even if I replaced the blade every 6th shave (which I don't; I usually go longer). That's incredibly environmentally friendly. In that amount of time a typical disposable razor shaver would have contributed probably around 250 plastic razors to a landfill.
Well, I can certainly see soaps are a hot button issue like backpacking stoves. I've been using a Svea 123R since 1979. I don't plan to change. However, sometimes I bring a Trangia alcohol stove with me.
Most people probably don't have the motor skills or the patience to learn how to use a safety razor without drawing blood. I can't expect someone who thinks a blade is medical waste to risk cutting themselves. If a blade is medical waste, so are snot rockets and used tissues.
My only soap is Williams Mug Soap. I don't plan on trying others.
Most people probably don't have the motor skills or the patience to learn how to use a safety razor without drawing blood. I can't expect someone who thinks a blade is medical waste to risk cutting themselves. If a blade is medical waste, so are snot rockets and used tissues.
My only soap is Williams Mug Soap. I don't plan on trying others.
Good point.
That was me, not Gary, you were quoting, BTW.
Some plastic razors can be recycled. I know some Whole Foods are recycling plastic razors, and they sell the Renew brand of razors that are made from post-consumer waste, like yogurt cups.
I have seen some disposable razors that use "bio-plastics" and will biodegrade over time. For instance, this razor:
Bio-degradable is interesting. What constitutes bio-degradeable is a significant question. If it breaks down at the molecular level, becoming something that isn't plastic, then yes, bio-degradeable. But other forms of plastic break down into ever smaller parts while remaining plastic, and micro-plastic is controversial. Then there's some bio-degradable material that doesn't in an anaerobic environment. Intact newspapers decades old have been found in landfills.
I'm not saying that these products aren't bio-degradeable, only that I'm skeptical.
Huh. Have had good results with boar, synthetic, and that scratchy VDH badger brush. Had been doing one-pass shaves, but have done three-pass the last two simply because I had enough lather. Yesterday and today I used a Fine synthetic. Today I did a face-lather.
Need to double-check measurements and see about ordering that knot for the VDH badger. It fell apart, so might as well put a good knot in it. OTOH, two types of VDH boar brushes are chugging right along.
I have tried over 150 different soaps encompassing over 40 different soap formulations. I consider both MWF and Tabac to be excellent soaps, far superior to VDH on all criteria.
I have not tried Mystic Water, but Jason Rudman of Ruds Shaves gives this soap a shave score of 91, which is excellent, but still well below elite level soaps available from Ariana and Evans, Barrister and Mann, Declaration Grooming, Grooming Department, Murphy and McNeil, Wholly Kaw, and Zingari Man, all of which rate 95 or higher on his scale. I also rank these soaps as elite.
I think some people appreciate that it's a good value- some people get into this trying to keep costs down, and I think products like VDH fit with that. Barrister and Mann's products, on the other hand, cost significantly more than any of VDH's products.
Another thing to consider is that what many people call bio-degradable is really photo degradable. Newsprint, for example, when buried in a landfill, decomposes VERY slowly. If the "bio-degradable" razor is in that category it's not much better than any other disposable.
I do not disagree that VDH is a reasonable choice for those who value economy over performance. I can get a decent shave with VDH. I was just taking exception to someone who posted that VDH Luxury soap performed as well as any other soap he had tried.
I can’t speak for their razors but their soap is #2 only to Cella. I just love the fact the soap is an exact match to any of my aftershave or cologne scents. 
It's a highly manufactured product with industrially produced surfactants, but Van Der Hagen does contain sodium stearate and glycerin.
Not a good idea. Most recycling programs have human beings or fragile machinery sorting through the recycling, and a container full of blades could easily pop open and present a sharp hazard. Consequently, most recycling programs do not accept razors as part of their curbside recycling.
Perhaps. I just don't see them as a viable solution for most people who shave, and there are likewise hidden costs to ownership, such as sharpening the blades, that are not environmentally neutral.
Most people would be far better off doing things like car-sharing or giving up eating beef if they are interested in a positive imapact on the environment. How you shave is a relatively trivial choice, in comparison.
Right, so I guess you can't recycle a can that you opened with a can opener, either? That has sharp edges and is much more likely to injure somebody working recycling than my blades in the Altoids tin.
People who work in this industry understand that it is inevitable that there will be potentially injurious items in the recycling. It's part of the job.
The difference is that can doesn't routinely come in contact with human skin.
Razor blades can carry all sorts of germs, including MRSA.
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