ASSIGNMENT PRODUCTION OF ORGANIC THIN SOAP

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

Name ID
Desmond Manan Anak Dus 55220217056
Nur Hidayah Binti Idris 55220217048
Nur Aneesa Abdul Halim 55220217050
Nor Razila Binti Othman 55220217136
Wan Nursyamimi W Hasbullah 55220217121
 Introduction
Introduction
In developing countries, infectious disease is the number one threat to the public
health (Curtis, 2003). Malaysia is surprised with the outbreak of Hand, Foot and Mouth
(HFMD) disease around June of this year (Anonymous, 2018) and this issue has increased the
public’s attention after the death of a 17-month old boy due to HFMD. Because of this,
everyone is advised to play a part in helping to avoid the spread of HFMD with good
practices such as to care more about their personal cleanliness especially in hand washing
with antibacterial soap. The function of hygienic behavior is to prevent the transmission of
the agents of infection (Curtis, 2003). According to Lines et al., 1989, although it is only a
prevention not a cure, but a method which is freely available and of small benefit may be
more useful compared to one which is more effective but unavailable.
Soap is a very common cleansing agent that has been used worldwide for centuries
and expected to be continuously utilize in the future. With approximately ten billion pounds
of soap produced per year, the soap production is indeed a profitable industry (Macias-Pelayo
et. al., 2015). The demand for soaps and detergents increase with the increase in the standard
of living of the population. Urbanization and increasing awareness of cleanliness are other
favorable factors (John C, 2013) . Soaps today are far too sophisticated and are available in a
wide variety of forms for specific uses. Therefore, a distinctive soap is to be produced with
the specific aims of prevention from HFMD. The uniqueness of this soap are that it is very
thin organic soap with additives such as lemongrass as antimicrobial agent fragrance and
black seed that is believed suitable for sensitive skin. The effectiveness of essential oil of
lemongrass for the treatment of pathogenic organisms was found effective except for few
organism (Naik et. al., 2010) and the black seed essential oil has beneficial effects in the
treatment of human patient with allergy disease (Kalus U A. B., 2003).
There are total of five chapters that include the introduction (chapter 1), literature
review (chapter 2), methodology (chapter 3), result and discussion (chapter 4); and
conclusion and recommendation (chapter 5). For this chapter (chapter 1), it is expect to give
the surface of why this study is to be conducted. As for that; the background, the research
objectives, significance and limitations of the study are discuss in this chapter. Next, chapter
2 basically gives the information about HFMD, importance of hand washing, comparison
process to make soap, additives and effect of downsizing. Besides, chapter 2 also highlights
the significant findings of previous research that can be applied for this study. For chapter 3,
the selected procedures to produce the thin soap is explained with visual aids. For chapter 4,

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the analysis of thin soap produced is describe in detail and the last chapter will clear out
whether the soap produced is safe to be used and proven effective.

Background of Study
Nowadays, the outbreak of the Hand, Foot and Mouth Disease (HFMD) in Malaysia
had caused concern amongst the community especially parents due to the high proportion of
children age five years old or younger suffering from HFMD. In Malaysia, the first HFMD
case was reported in Sarawak in the year 1997. In a time period of roughly three months,
about 3000 cases related to HFMD had been reported to the Health Department of Sarawak.
Other than Malaysia, developing countries such as Korea, Australia, Japan, Brunei and
Singapore also suffered from the serious outbreak of this disease.
HFMD can spread easily from one person to another via a direct contact between
people contaminated with HFMD to another person. However, the degree of HFMD infection
can be reduced by handwashing with soap due to is ability in reducing infectious disease.
Therefore, the focus in this research is to create an effective soap that has the potential to
reduce HFMD cases in Malaysia.
The production of soap has begun since the Egyptian era, utilising traditional method
and skills. Historically, soap production require ashes which is then reacted with water and
fats. The water is the removed completely from the reaction via evaporation process which
left the reacted ashes and fats. During the reaction and evaporating process, saponification
took place thus producing soap. In this technological era, the method in production of soap
has changed significantly as separation process of fats into fatty acid and glycerine produces
soap which is then neutralized to increase the soap production yield. Saponification process is
an exothermic process which means during the reaction, the temperature of the reactor and
surrounding will increase due to the heat released during the reaction between fatty acid with
an alkaline solution.
Saponification process can be divided into two major types which are hot and cold
saponification process. The major difference between these two processes is the method of
handling the produced soap. In cold process, the mixture of fatty acid and base will be
moulded according to desired shape and pattern then cooled and hardened before undergo
curing process in which saponification process take places during this stage of the process. In
contrast with cold process, the mixture will be heated until the mixture change into gel phase
before it is moulded. During the heating process, saponification process occurs. Different
with cold process, curing is not needed in hot saponification process as saponification process

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occur during the heating phase. Nowadays, cold process are being used more often due to the
lower production cost compared to hot process.
Fatty acid is one major component in saponification process. Fatty acid originated
from animals such as lard, tallow and fish whereas from plants, palm and coconut oil are the
most common source of fatty acid. A study by Eke et. al., (2004) mentioned that unique
mixture of various oils can enhance soap quality. Additives is not vital in saponification
process however, a pleasant odour enhance the buyer decision to buy soap. Essential oil is
one of the most important additives in soap as it gives unique smell to the soap. Essential oil
are typically extracted from plant parts such as its flower, leaves and even from its root. Apart
from the aromatic smell, essential oil also have a number of health benefits due to their rich
antioxidants properties. In this research study, lemongrass oil will play an important role as
fragrance due to the component in its essential oil.
In this study, one of the main component is the size of the soap produced specifically
the thickness of the soap as the targeted thickness is as thin as one to two millimetre. The
thickness of the soap plays an important role in this research study as the soap produced need
to be completely used up to minimise the infection of HFMD virus as soap can become
medium of transmission of bacteria when shared with multiple users. Furthermore, Yonezawa
& Richards (2016) stated that goods with smaller size attracts more buyers due to the
conveniently that comes with it. The introduction of this organic thin hand soap as one of the
method to reduce the spreading of HFMD virus possibly can be accepted by various
industries and consumer.

Research Questions
There are few research objectives which are as below:
1. To increase awareness of using hand soap in people’s daily routine (I’ll explain the
benefits of practicing to use hand sanitizer everyday)
2. To ensure this hand soap product is portable, handy and easy to be used by customers
in different age groups

Across the centuries, production of hand soaps are abundant with the aim to clean the
hands from bacteria. Practicing the hand washing using hand soap is vital but sometimes
people may find it is hard to follow every day. Basically hand washing has been practicing in
order to reduce the contact transmission of microorganism. It is also recognized as one of
several infection control practices with a clear demonstrated efficacy and remains as the

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efforts to minimize the risk of infection (Ayliffe, 1986). In some other cases, hand washing is
important in a way to reduce the risk of getting food poisoning.

There was a report stated that 50 to 80 percent of all food poisoning cases in Europe
are reported to be attributable to food eaten at home (Scott, 1996). Thus to prevent the
occurrence of food poisoning by contamination of foods eaten at home, one should be aware
that importance of appropriate sanitation of kitchen utensils (Toshima et al., 1998; Arai et al.,
1999) together with cleaning the hands (Scott and Bloomfield, 1990;Zhao et al., 1998).
However, practicing without proper guidelines and knowledge is insufficient. It is necessary
to know how hands are contaminated with bacteria every day. For instance, in Japan for food
service industry, it needs to be approximately 30 seconds for lathering and 20 seconds for
rinsing that followed by further sanitation with a soap. Hence, clearly it shows that hand soap
has become significant in providing a complete personal hygiene for a person in daily life.

Other than that, washing hands with soap regularly after using the toilet or before
contact with food can reduce the risk of getting pneumonia and also diarrhoea by 30 to 50
percent. There was a first global Hand Washing Day held back in 2008, joined by more than
70 countries where over 120 million children around the world washed their hands with soaps
at that day. Regarding to Former President, Association of Resident Doctors in Lagos
University Teaching Hospital (LUTH), and Chairman Nigerian Medical Association (NMA),
Lagos State chapter, Dr. Omojowolo Olubunmi, he said that several diseases such as cholera
and other diarrhoeal disease, typhoid fever and poliomyelitis, among others, are transmitted
via the faeco-oral route. Washing the hands with soap frequently is the best way to minimize
the amount of germs in most situations. Furthermore, he added that alcohol based hand
sanitizers able to quickly reduce the number of germs on hands in certain situations, however
sanitizers are not as effective as proper hand washing. Hence, hand soap is more effective to
be used during hand washing.

Product sizing issue has become prominent especially within the customers and
consumer. Specifically when it comes to downsizing the product, there are few factors need
to be considered. In aspect of soap production, nowadays soaps produced by the
manufacturers in distinct shapes, sizes, colours and qualities/grades depending on their
specific uses and purposes. Each of the soap product may have identical shapes and sizes
especially shape not become as part of the manufacturer’s trademark. Somehow it is hard for
consumer to differentiate the soap of similar features that have been produced by different

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manufacturers. Trademark made on the products by manufacturers is to distinguish the
products from others that eventually ease the consumers to recognize their products without
testing (Oluka, 1999).

For number of years that size and shapes of soaps have been produced for plenty kind
of uses either for personal uses or other uses such as in domestic and industrial areas. Some
of the soap products have been modified according to the modern market demands as well.
However, size and shapes of soaps may give effects to the consumers too. For example in
specific case such as toilet soap bars, the soap has been commercialized in large and small
pieces, however having a soap size that can be used for several times found to be non-
hygienic. These soaps may expose to any different type of people either in house or even
worse in public areas such as toilets, bathroom at restaurants, gas stations and many more.
Sometimes it is common to find dirty impurities or stain stick on the soap since it is in solid
form.

Thus clearly it shows that size of product affects the consumer review and their
satisfaction. Consumers evaluate the products based on his or her own values, beliefs, past
experience (Peter & Olson, 1990). Apart from non-hygienic factor, size of product plays role
in making the product is light and portable for daily routine uses. The product must be
suitable and universally can be used by different types of age groups hence, it then has wide
opportunity to boost the market demand.

Significance of Study

Recently, it was revealed that most of the states across Malaysia have increase in the
number of HFMD cases in a period of time. This kind of disease can be infected by anyone
especially children who are below the age of five can be said they are at higher risk. This is
because they do not have the strong immunity to the viruses that caused HFMD. HFMD
disease is a highly contagious infection and it was caused by viruses from
the Enterovirus genus, most commonly the coxsackievirus (Boskey, 2016). These viruses can
be spread through direct contact with unwashed hands or surfaces contaminated with feces.
Since HFMD can be infected from person to person by direct contact with nose and throat
discharges, saliva or the fluid from blisters, the public has been advised to have a good
hygiene.

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 Practicing a good hygiene is one of the alternative to protect against HFMD. Hands
are the main pathway of germs transmission during health care (Organisation, 2009). Regular
hand washing can greatly help to reduce the risk of contracting with this disease. Therefore, it
is important to have a good hand hygiene in our daily life in order to avoid from the
transmission of harmful germs and to prevent health care associated with infections. Washing
hands with soap and water will remove more disease that caused by organisms than washing
hands with water alone. However, most of the people did not take this as a serious matter as
people find it is hard to bring along a bar of soap anywhere because it is not portable and
handy. In our market, soaps can be found in different sizes of shape but it is difficult to find
the one in the small size which is more lighter and handy. Hence, it is more preferable to have
a small size of soap in our market in other to make people’s life become easier.

Soap is produced as a medium for hygiene. There are a few factors that should be take
into an account especially when it involved with the product sizing in our market.
Specifically, in the production of soaps, there are many type of soaps with different qualities,
shapes and sizes depending on their purposes and uses. Commonly, a bar of soap with a large
size is much more easier to find in our market compared to the small one. This situation
somehow make our consumers found it is hard to bring along a soap with them. Some of
them found a bar of soap caused some weight and consumed some space when they carry
with them. Therefore, it is important to find a way in other to solve this problem so it can
eventually ease the consumer. Package downsizing can be define as the act of reducing the
volume of product per package so that the new soap can substitutes the old one. Consumers
are more prefer to have a small package size because their perception of risk and convenience
(Yonezawa, 2016). Therefore, downsizing of bar soap by producing it in a thin size can be
completely used up after applying it once. This also can be great help in avoiding transfer of
bacteria or harmful germs in a medium that supposed to help preventing their transmission.

Limitations of Study

Many limitations exist in the current study beginning with lack of prior research
studies on the topic packaging downsizing. According to Ioannidis, it is important to have
prior research studies as the basis for the literature review before conducting the experiment
(Ioannidis, 2007). Thus, it can ensure that researchers have understanding the problem that is
currently investigated. The study was further limited by the possibility limitation of the
researchers to access limitation. As this study depends on having access to laboratory, the

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access is denied or otherwise limited as it involved maintenance or hazardous chemicals.
Next, the research findings of this study were limited by time constraints. This is because
usually, it takes at least for one year to complete research study. However, the time
constraints as provided only one semester to completed the study. Therefore, it is
acknowledge that in future research is needed to revise the specific method or analysing the
soap before it being used so that it is beneficial to the consumers (Brutus, 2013).