If you’re trying to simplify and go green, you have a magic helper – baking soda. It’s almost too good to be true – cheap, natural, non-toxic, with a legion of uses. If you’re not using baking soda daily, you may be surprised at how many expensive products you can replace with this one simple substance. You could almost imagine it capable of any feat.
What exactly is baking soda?
Baking soda is a salt that goes by many names: NaHCO3, sodium bicarbonate, bread soda, cooking soda, sodium hydrogen carbonate, sodium acid carbonate, bicarbonate of soda, sodium bicarb, bicarb soda, or just bicarb. In its natural mineral form it’s called nahcolite, and it’s found in large quantities in Searles Lake, California and the oil-shale deposits of Green River Formation in Colorado.
However, most of the baking soda in the United States comes from a natural mineral ore called trona mined near Green River, Wyoming. Trona is mineral residue from Lake Gosiute, an ancient freshwater lake that once covered 15,000 miles of Southwestern Wyoming. When Lake Gosuite evaporated, minerals settled in the bed, creating the trona deposit, which is now 1500 feet below the ground. There’s so much of it there that it could meet the world’s needs for baking soda for thousands of years. Many companies mine the trona deposit, including FMC Corporation, General Chemical, and Solvay Chemicals. After trona is extracted, it must be refined to make baking soda – a multi-step process you can read about here.
In other parts of the world, baking soda is made in laboratories from brine and limestone using the Solvay Process. This method creates environmentally damaging byproducts like calcium chloride that increase the salinity of inland waterways when released.
So, is baking soda really “green”?
Baking soda production requires either mining or creates hazardous bi-products. However, it is a versatile, non-toxic product that replaces far more hazardous chemicals in most people’s homes. As cleaning products go, it’s fairly Earth-friendly.
Is there anything baking soda can’t do?
You probably know that baking soda helps quick breads and cookies rise and that a box in the fridge removes excess moisture and absorbs odor. Here are some lesser-known things you can do with it:
- Smother grease and household fires.
- Add it to bath water. It softens skin; relieves itching from chicken pox, measles, or bug bites; soothes a sunburn; or helps clear up a baby’s diaper rash.
- Wash your face, body, and hair with it.
- Dust it on in place of underarm deoderant.
- Sprinkle it in garbage cans, diaper pails, cat litter boxes, and stinky shoes to neutralize odor.
- Sprinkle it where needed to repel ants and roaches.
- Clean with it – shower curtains, coffee pots, dentures, thermoses, refrigerators, garage floors, burned pans, marble, bathtubs, and drains.
- Add a half-teaspoon to a glass of water to relieve heartburn.
- Brush your teeth with it. Mix it with water to make a mouthwash to freshen breath and relieve canker sores.
- Add it to the water when soaking beans to make them more digestible.
- Clean the corrosion from car batteries with it.
Oh I, too, love baking soda. I just wrote a guest post for another blogger on using baking soda and apple cider vinegar to wash your hair (which I have been doing since last July).
We do the baths for the boys, plus make our own cleaning products with it. I love knowing the boys can help me clean the house and get their hands “dirty” without worrying about them swallowing poison!
Thanks for reading and commenting, Marianne! I’ve heard about the magic of the baking soda/ apple cider vinegar combo.
I just came across an NPR story about using less shampoo or replacing it with baking powder. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102062969
I too love baking soda! Iv been using it for about a year now to replace many other cleaning products and Im sure have saved a bunch!
I never thought about using it as a deodorant, Ill have to try that! Thanks! I love your blog and will be stopping back by again:-)
Thanks for your comment, Tina! I’m amazed by how well baking soda works for deodorant. I just dust it on plain when my skin is dry, and I’ve had very good luck with that. I recently read it’s even better if you mix it half-and-half with cornstarch, which makes the powder less abrasive. I’d love to hear how it works for you.
So I read this post a couple of days ago, then last night I was up late with a bad acid stomach. Then I remembered: baking soda= antacid! It worked like a charm! Thanks so much. 🙂
some of these i knew but the rest i didn’t. right on for baking soda!!
i had to link this on my most recent post http://ciderandfaun.blogspot.com/2009/06/monday-morning.html
Hello Baking Soda Devotees….I use it to wash my cars which unfortunately sit underneath both a tulip poplar tree and a white oak tree. Sprinkled on a damp surface, and rubbed with a cloth rag & rinsed, the car is as smooth and shiny as my teeth after I brush with it!
It can scour off the proteins of raw milk on the inside of my milk jars–which would adhere if I washed with hot water thus avoiding contamination of future milk batches.
I sprinkle a little in my fine crystal when I hand wash, using it’s gentle abrasiveness, and use it on almost all glass ware-like vases, gallon jars, glass carboys for wine, wine bottles for reuse, etc… it leaves everything so sparkly clean. Just rinse, rinse….
Also, on a health thread, there is also an Italian gentleman who is treating cancer by directly applying baking soda to tumors and by intravenous dosing. I have heard other talk of drinking it regularly to boost alkaline reserves in the blood so the body can effectively regulate excess acids (which feature prominently in all disease). You really must check this doctor out! http://www.curenaturalicancro.com/