Viewing the process as a whole, ignoring the extraneous dye and stamps; it’s a pretty simple to make usable:
- Mix fat with sodium hydroxide.
- Solidify soap into shape suitable for compaction (in this case, ribbons).
- Repeatedly compact shaped soap into desired shape.
How efficient and usable would the soap be if it was just sold as cut ribbions, instead of bars?
I make my own soap (hot processed) from lard and tallow I collect from cooking. I prefer to generate as little waste as possible. It’s stupid easy to make your own soap. I always do at least 10% of the soap being either coconut or olive oil. Mix the lye with the animal fat portion first then follow up with the coconut and/or olive oil. This let’s the bulk of the lye react with the animal fats then most of the “superfat” (I usually do 4-5%) be the other oils which have more benefits to your skin. Olive oil is better for moisturizing. Coconut oil leave you a little dryer feeling but also is naturally antimicrobial. I add in some essential oils as well. Also, a really good tip, if you like citrus scented/infused soaps, you can get orange oil and “citrus solvent” for waaaaaaaaaaaaay cheaper than some “lemon” or “lemongrass” essential oil. Citrus solvent is just d-limonene which is the primary chemical component of all citrus oils. Seriously it constitutes like over 90% of all citrus oils.
Personally I prefer a mix of peppermint, tea tree, cassia (basically off brand cinnamon and extremely any fungal) and the the limonene. It give off what I would consider as a “medicinal” scent. Pleasant in a “this smells like 'good for me. '” sort of way.
Doing this I haven’t bought soap from the store in years. I just recently made another batch of soap out of 2 quarts of rendered lard, a quart of tallow, and about a cup of olive oil. It made 30 bars worth. Which is at least 2 years of soap worth. If not more. As far as cost is concerned I can confidently say it’s less than 50¢ a bar.