Frying oil becomes soap: “Environmentally friendly and climate-smart”

Do you feel that you use unnecessarily many chemicals when cleaning at home?

 

Nine years ago, we decided to start manufacturing and selling Västerbottenssåpa on a slightly larger scale, so that more people would have the opportunity to clean in a more natural way. 

 

The basic recipe is great-grandmother Fredrika’s from 1926, and it has been in the family ever since. 

 

From 2006 to 2011, we ran a small hotel with a restaurant, and that’s when we realized that the rapeseed oil from the kitchen’s deep fryer was very good, yet still destined to be “thrown away.” 

 

We thought it was a terrible waste, and the recipe resurfaced.

 

During that time, we didn’t sell any soap, but we cleaned the hotel with our own soap—which was good enough!

 

But everything has its time, and in 2011 the hotel got new owners, and we began thinking that the soap might be able to continue being produced. However, we were missing both a factory premises and a name. The soap from our old family recipe was named Västerbottenssåpa, registered with the Swedish Chemicals Agency, and we put together an application to the authorities, thinking that perhaps we could get some help building a small soap factory.

 

When the answer came, it wasn’t very encouraging—they hadn’t heard of anything more foolish! 

 

We could have given up then, but after a day or so we thought: If it’s really that foolish, it’s most likely because no one else has thought of making soap from used frying oil. And for that very reason, it’s probably a good idea. So we did … we built a tiny, tiny factory ourselves. It took a while, and we probably didn’t really get started until 2018.

 

 

 

It has always been important to us to make soap properly—not to add unnecessary chemicals, but simply to deliver PURE soap. 

 

Many of us don't read what is written on the back of the ingredients label when it comes to cleaning products. We want to change that. Turn over bottles and jars and read the label. If there are warning symbols, there is a reason for them. It means there are substances in the product that require a warning. 

 

Our soaps contain none of these substances and do not require any warning symbols.

 

Of course, it is up to each individual to decide which ingredients are considered too questionable to expose ourselves and our families to, but it is important to be familiar with warning symbols.

 

We still use only cooking oil collected from selected local restaurants. It is mostly rapeseed oil or a corn/rapeseed blend—but NEVER palm oil or animal fat. The oil, which is purified and saponified, then forms the basis of all our soap-based cleaning products.

 

Would you also like to start cleaning with natural cleaning products? Visit our website here.

 

✅ Circular – 100% reuse of natural cooking oil!
✅ Made in Sweden, Vilhelmina
✅ Cleaning doesn't have to be so complicated—soap, vinegar, and baking soda solve virtually every cleaning problem you might have in a typical home. 

 

On our website, you can also read several hundred comments from verified customers who clean with Västerbottenssåpa.