Honest 2 Goodness Lifeline Soap!

Desireland launched its bi-weekly stall at the Honest 2 Goodness (H2G) Farmers Market yesterday. The initial purpose of the stall is to provide a public face for the Lifeline Project in north inner city and a venue for direct sales of Lifeline Soap, our handmade artisan soap made from locally foraged ingredients in Stoneybatter, Dublin 7.

Although soap may seem out of place in a farmer’s market, Lifeline Soap is a direct bi-product of the food industry. 50% of our soap’s ingredients are high quality food grade oils, formerly used to preserve food products such as olives and sun dried tomatoes, which are discarded by our neighbour and fellow H2G stall  holder, The Real Olive Company. The soap is produced to raise funds for the Lifeline Project and develop awareness around one of the project’s guiding principles: industrial ecology (when one producers waste becomes a valuable ingredient in another product).

Over time we will introduce other not for profit projects and the products we develop to fund them. Another example is our Bridgestone Award Winning SPUDS.ie ‘crisps with a conscience’which are used to communicate issues that emerge from the Sustainable Potatoes United Development Study (SPUDS.ie). The first edition of crisps focused on the fact that too many potatoes are rejected by the marketplace because of their shape or size. Our new limited edition, currently in the pipeline, will introduce you to non-gm naturally blight resistant potatoes which can dramatically cut down on the use of chemicals and energy in potato production.

We made many new friends this Saturday including a professional ecologist and a DIT lecturer in Social Sciences who would like to contribute to the project. One woman we chatted with used to enjoy walking the canal portion Boadstone to Broombridge line when she first moved to Dublin years ago. Eventually she was forced to stop due to escalating anti-social behavior but agreed that sensitively activating the line could create an atmosphere of natural vigilance and make this ‘secret garden’ walkable again.

We were absolutely delighted with our first day out at the H2G and look forward to more conversations at our next appearance: Saturday June 1st!