(upbeat music) - I'm Laura Kneib and I'm the founder of F.R.O.G.

Soap.

We are here in Bremerton, Washington, a little bit west of Seattle.

(gentle upbeat music) At Bremerton, gosh, it's a town of maybe about 40,000, biggest town Kitsap County.

It's a great town, good weather, Pacific Northwest.

You couldn't ask for any more than to be in a place like this.

I started F.R.O.G.

Soap.

It was more of an accident because I was idle.

I'm not good at idle.

We went out to a restaurant one day and they were emptying a french fryer vat and having made soap and knowing what it takes to make soap, I thought, I wonder if I can make soap out of that oil.

So that was the start, and I finally got a stable recipe and I started making it and then, okay, this is great, but it doesn't look that good, let's make it pretty.

So it went from there and once that was done, it just made such a fabulous soap with the extra chemistry part of it.

When you put all these things together, you don't just get soap, you get soap with glycerin.

The reclaimed oil that we use from french fryers makes more glycerin.

So it makes the soap even richer.

Ma taught me to sew, Dad taught me electricity, plumbing, woodworking, and then certainly the making of soap as well.

The reclaimed oil is only in the soap, that stays there, (gentle music) but then you've also got coconut and almond and ahoba and shea and cocoa butter and all these things.

Those things translate in different ratios into hand cream.

Those translate into lip balm.

Add a few more ingredients like citric acid and baking powder, baking soda, corn starch, and you've got bath bombs, beard bombs, beard oils, salves.

They all have different properties in what they can do for you, but they're all essentially made of the same thing, like the laundry soap we make is made from our very basic soap.

The same scents can be used across the board with essential oils.

(gentle music) The Puget Sound soap, it's more of a picture I've made of what the Sound looks like.

I use the sand from the Sound and put it in the bottom and then use, a good colorant for that was cumin.

It's just a good brown, a good gritty looking color, and then laying this, the sea lettuce on top of that, so it almost like you'd look at the bottom underneath the water and all the things that would float down, lay on top of the sand and then indigo powder to make the blue and then stir it through, and then the natural color, almost a white of the soap on top.

So it looks like the water turning over and then giving it texture on the top.

So it was painting a picture with that one.

I taught myself how to make brooms and now people want workshops in that.

They're Earth-friendly.

You can weave in dried flowers, lavender, pine cones, you know, you can pick up everything.

You can make something out of it.

Mother Nature provides so many cool things for us to make things from.

I think had I done this 20 years ago, 30 years ago, it wouldn't have worked because people weren't ready for that, and it's just use it, throw it away, use it, throw it away, but this way, it's reusing things, putting them back through, giving it one more cycle, one more turn and turning something like oil that would go into either making, let's say diesel fuel, stacking up in buildings, going into the ground or a landfill, and turning it into something Earth-friendly.

This is a nifty remedy for when you've been stung by stinging nettles.

(gentle upbeat music) We're gonna use this a little tin of baking soda in here.

It doesn't take much, tablespoon.

You can mix this in your hand.

You can mix it in a little bowl and you're just gonna pour a little bit of water in there.

Doesn't take much to make a little paste and just put it on the affected area and it neutralizes it, no more sting, and then you'll feel better.

What we're doing is important with all the reclaiming and recycling and upcycling and all of this that we do.

That's the purpose of why we're here and our customers are in tune with that, and that's what's important.

(gentle upbeat music)