as students across loyola university chicago lather their hands in the restroom, a small sticker on the soap dispenser which reads “biosoap” reminds them that the cleanser they are using isn’t just from a bottle, rather it is a specially crafted product made by students in loyola’s school of environmental sustainability’s searle biodiesel lab. 

the lab houses a biodiesel processor, methanol recovery system, and soap production equipment, which is used to convert used cooking oil from loyola food service facilities into renewable biodiesel fuel that is used to operate a fleet of campus shuttles and buses. the lab team uses byproducts from fuel production to make environmentally friendly soap for campus restrooms and kitchens, operating a zero-waste production process while offering experiential learning opportunities for students.

duncan schanz and mikaila cadavona are student interns for the searle biosiesel lab, a program overseen by zach waickman, the lab manager. they have been working in the lab since the beginning of the 2024-2025 school year.

“the origins of our biosoap all start with the biodiesel process. when we’re making the biodiesel, we take our used cooking oil and put it through a chemical reaction. in this reaction we get a byproduct which is crude glycerin,” says schanz, a second year student studying environmental science. 

“the crude glycerin is then refined to remove the methanol, which we use later in our other biodiesel processes so it’s very sustainable,” schanz said. “after we take the methanol out it’s very viscous and very lava like, and it takes a very long time to pump.”

“then we put our glycerin into our soap processor and do a chemical reaction called saponification where we add koh and we dilute it with water and that’s basically all you need to make soap, however we do add coconut oil for some moisturizing aspect, ” said mikaila cadavona, another student intern in the lab. 

“after that we let it stir and heat, filter it a couple times, and we make sure our soap is at a 10.25 ph. once we are at that we add some essential oils to make it smell good and that gets our soap right about 9.5 ph and that’s good to go to be processed and packaged up to go to both our campuses,” cadavona said.

the lab recently received feedback from the student body, from which there were complaints about the smell and texture of the soap. “we took a ton of feedback from students and what we found is that our soap is a little rough to the skin and makes it dry, and that is because chelation causes that sensation to the skin,” cadavona said. 

in order to address these concerns, the lab is focusing on a chelating agent, which is a chemical compound that binds tightly to metal ions. 

“there was some prior research from a former student who found out that there was a metal count in our soap, and those metals are chelators, so we have to get that metal count down,” cadavona said.  “usually in the soap industry they use edta, which is a chemical chelating agent; however, edta is not on the epa (u.s. environmental protections agency) eco-friendly list, so we are not able to use that as it does not align with our sustainable values. one promising chelating agent is citric acid, so we just have to see how to add that in,” she said. 

“a lot of people who have problems with the scent, that’s just because our soap is natural, it comes from these products that we get from making biodiesel, so it’s hard to get that smell off of it being natural and being biodegradable. it’s a much higher quality of soap but at a little cost of biodiesel smell,” schanz said. 

while the exact recipe for the soap is always being revised and tweaked, the soap production process consistently aids with the long-term goal of reducing waste, conserving resources, and combatting climate change. 

the reason you may want to: native plants support a greater abundance and diversity of wildlife by providing habitat that directly supports populations of butterflies, bees, and birds. native plants make landscapes more adaptable to future environmental stressors caused by the climate crisis, including temperature swings, drought, flooding, and pest outbreaks.

in martha’s vineyard, off the coast of massachusetts’ cape cod, the polly hill arboretum has spent decades creating an online record of more than 200 island native plants that you can browse using its plantfinder resource.

timothy boland, executive director of polly hill, says that planting native plants helps to prepare for the unknowns. “native plants are uniquely adapted to soils and stressors, and more so have a really tight connection with the animals in an environment,” boland said. 

polly hill not only informs, it sells native plant plugs to people interested in adding natives to their landscaping. some of the plants they propagate, like red columbine, which flowers in the spring, have had limited populations on the island, and polly hill has helped to restore them. 

“we knew it was here and only here, and now we can propagate it. from a conservation standpoint, with an endemic plant, what we’ve done here is kind of cool,” boland said.

orange butterfly weed is its most popular native plant due to its bright orange flowers and attractiveness to monarch butterflies, but boland encourages people to look beyond the beauty of a plant and consider what it can provide to the environment: “we tend to be enamored with just the beautiful, and don’t understand the functionality of what we would consider a grass. a lot of things have equal value, even though they don’t have the startling beauty.”

a convenient place to “check out” native seeds, the west tisbury library in massachusetts offers a seed library which contains a unique collection of seeds suited to the local environment, and the library hopes to create a locally adapted collection of seeds over time. 

the seed library there has been focused mostly on food seeds until recently. mary sage napolitan, the regenerative landscape manager at island grown initiative, has worked with the organization to create a native plants section.

“there’s a lot of energy behind it, but it’s really hard to get the plants. you can buy seeds from some companies, but they’re not always from the vineyard. the hope is that at least we’ll have some bank of seeds so that people can start,” napolitan said. 

although people are often hesitant to add native plants to their gardens, napolitan says you can still have a gorgeous, well-manicured garden made up of mostly, if not entirely, native plants.

“there are nonnative plants that aren’t bad; some of those plants are totally harmless. it’s just a matter of also making a point to incorporate native plants, because we know that they support so many insects and other wildlife,” napolitan said.

napolitan recommends native garden plants such as penstemon digitalis, a tall white flower, penstemon hirsutus, which produces a similar purple flower, and monarda fistulosa, a lavender flower that attracts a variety of bees and butterflies. napolitan herself is very fond of asters, which can be small blue, white, or purple flowers, and goldenrods, a tall golden flower that is natural bird food.

christine wiley, a horticultural expert and greenhouse grower for more than 30 years, owns vineyard gardens with her husband chuck, a self-proclaimed “plant-aholic.”

“we want to have a positive environmental impact and do anything we can to slow down climate change,” christine wiley said. “native plants have been here for a long time, and we know they do very well here.”

vineyard gardens hosted a garden worksop on june 22, 2024, where attendees were taught how to plant for climate resilience. the workshop was led by guest speaker andrea berry, executive director of the wild seed project in maine. “it’s nice to host a well-known speaker and to support ecology. we are a small island here, and it’s nice to support our environment,” wiley said.

wild seed project is a maine nonprofit that works to build climate-resilient habitats in northeast landscapes. its mission is to inspire people to take action in increasing the presence of native plants grown from wild seed that safeguard wildlife habitat, support biodiversity, and mitigate the effects of climate change.

“native plants are plants that have evolved in the place they are for millennia in relation to the creatures. therefore they are really critical parts to a healthy and vibrant ecosystem,” berry said. 

native plants have interrelated partnerships with insects. milkweed is a good example, as the plant is a select place for monarch butterflies to lay their eggs. those eggs hatch and the caterpillars feed on the milkweed exclusively, then as adults, the monarch feeds off the plant’s blooms. “they have evolved this beautiful relationship with this plant over time that is really critical,” berry said. 

berry included that native plants can be wonderful garden plants because they are adapted to the environment they are experiencing. “when you actually stop and slow down and take a look at a garden, the beauty of a garden is in all the different pieces moving within it, and all the life that it supports. a healthy, living place where all different creatures live and can thrive is actually what i define as beautiful,” berry said.

native plant adaptation continues. the island’s recent rainstorms and windstorms resulted in a great amount of erosion, and conservation efforts have turned towards native plants. 

“when plants evolve in parallel with stressors coming at them from our ecosystem, they develop adaptations that allow them to respond to or mitigate some of those outside challenges. if we have a biodiverse ecosystem, then we are going to have a population of plants diverse enough to be resilient in the face of whatever nature is throwing at us,” berry said.

this story was originally published in mv times.