The soda manual

Baking soda, food soda, sodium bicarbonate or sodium bicarbonate - there are many names for soda, the chemical name sodium hydrogen carbonate (NaHCO3) remains the clearest and shows the difference to the equally versatile washing soda, sodium carbonate (Na2CO3), with which, however, it should not be confused.
Three important properties ensure that sodium bicarbonate is so versatile in the household:
- It is a sodium salt (as is common salt) and has a basic pH when dissolved in water. Therefore, it is well suited for neutralizing acids.
- Soda releases carbonic acid when heated or in contact with acids or moisture, and can therefore be used as a baking agent.
- And sodium bicarbonate is a good water softener and fat solvent, which is why it is also well suited to make cleaning and laundry detergent itself.

The uses of the fine white powder are therefore numerous, so numerous that smarticular has dedicated an entire book to the jack-of-all-trades. With sodium bicarbonate, cleaning and laundry detergents, care products and kitchen aids can be made yourself, which are not only more environmentally friendly and usually just as effective as their colorful colleagues on the supermarket shelf, but also cheaper. 250 applications with often astonishingly simple recipes have been collected by smarticular in this book and grouped chapter by chapter: Natron as a kitchen helper, as a household cleaner, as a garden and household helper, and Natron for health and body care. The introductory chapter provides detailed basic knowledge and lists which ingredients you should also have in the house in addition to baking soda in order to get started right away: Vinegar, curd soap, xylitol or birch sugar and essential oils.

Usually, there is a website in addition to a film, book, etc. Here it’s the other way round: The ideas portal smarticular.net was launched first and quickly became a digital reference address for eco-friends and the health-conscious, providing tips, ideas and recipes for sustainable living. Committed people who want to take things into their own hands, do them themselves and try them out to make their lives a little easier and greener visit the page. Now the team behind the portal has turned the online guide into several printed publications. The book series “Selber machen statt kaufen” (Do it yourself instead of buying), for example, reveals to its readers shopping alternatives and approaches to sustainable living. The smarticular team focuses on topics like home remedies, saving plastic, or avoiding waste in the manuals.