How Do Natural Dish Soaps Actually Work?

It’s time to upgrade your dish soap and ditch the commercial brands that leave your hands dry and your dishes dirty. By switching to a natural dish detergent that cuts the grease without the chemicals, you’ll not only be helping care for our environment but you’ll be putting those in your household in contact with better ingredients and less chemicals.

Whether you’re after scented, plant-based, moisturizing, or fragrance-free, we’ve gathered the best dish soap brands of 2021 to help you find a dishwashing liquid you’ll love.

How does dish soap work?

We’ve all heard the saying, “like water and oil.” That’s because water and oil don’t normally mix –– instead, they separate into different layers. Here’s where soap comes into play.

Soap is made up of a pin-shaped molecule with two heads –– one head is hydrophilic (it loves water!) and the other is hydrophobic (it hates water!)

The hydrophobic heads latch onto grease and oil in an attempt to get away from the scary water, and the hydrophilic bits pull them the other way, toward the water, yanking grease and oil right off your hands, dishes, counters, and clothes ... suspending them in the water so they can be rinsed down the drain. Et voila! The mysterious cleaning power of soap, revealed.