From the remote mountains of Italy, 43-year-old Delizia’s grandmothers created soap from leftover lard and cooking oil.
From that era when nothing was wasted and respect for end-to-end produce was innate, decades passed and Delizia grew up in Queanbeyan, part of a big Italian family.
“My career’s been very varied, I was in the Army for eight years, got into community work, and eventually landed in a government role,” she said.
“By the time Covid hit, I was unhappy and undervalued in my corporate job. I wanted to be my own boss, and not rely on anyone else to value what I did.”
Around the same time, panic buying was occurring. Staring at the bare shelves, with lockdown imminent, Delizia remembered her childhood.
“I saw my grandparents make soap from the lard and leftover cooking oil. On the farm in Italy, they saw the value in using every part of produce and not wasting anything.
“People had always told me, ‘You need to start your own business, but first you need to find your passion.’ Now, I thought, is the time for me to start.”
In the slow start of turning her ancestors’ practice into a start-up business, Delizia found she enjoyed it more than her corporate job.
“I was following in my grandparents’ footsteps, being self-sufficient, being green, and it led me to thinking about how I can be responsible at a community level.”
Delizia contacted local businesses like Queanbeyan’s Bohemian Cafe, which was happy to donate their used cooking oil, and the Boxgum Grazing family farm, which provided their discarded animal fat.
Today, Delizia’s carbon neutral soaps are shipped all over Australia, and the circular economies that she has formed with local businesses selling her products won her ‘Highly Commended’ in the recent Australian Tidy Town Awards.
“Many people don’t realise that anyone can turn their cooking oil into soap at home. It’s an art that’s died with our parents and grandparents’ generations. My wish for the future is to bring that back,” she says.
“I had to win people over in convincing them that the soap is 100 per cent safe to use. I put a survey out on Facebook asking whether they would use this soap and got mixed responses.”
In her 10m x 4m workshop, where she makes every bar from scratch, Delizia explained the chemistry of soap.
“Soap is made of three main ingredients: fat or oils, sodium hydroxide, and water. You mix those three at different ratios, and you make soap. When I use used cooking oil, I have it at a ratio that very little of that oil remains in the finished product.
“Cleaning and purifying the oil is a long process, but it’s worth it to see the oil transformed into soap rather than discarded.”
From the animal fat donated by Boxgum Grazing, Delizia creates her best-selling balms.
“Animal fat has collagen and all those different vitamins that are good for your skin,” she explained. “The tallow I use is tripled rendered, melted down three times, and cleaned.”
Delizia Naturally is an aid to young in-the-know mothers in the community, who keep coming back for her baby balm, soothing nappy rash and cracked nipples.
“It’s great for weening babies, because it doesn’t have any ingredients other than the tallow, olive oil and a little bit of lavender essential oil, if wanted. If the baby eats it, it’s just tallow and oil.
“My philosophy is, if it has something in it that I can’t eat, why am I putting it on my skin? That’s twice as important for a baby.
“I really want people to question the glamour of commercial products. If I were to purchase a bar of soap from a well-known international brand and look at the back of it, chances are I can’t read half the ingredients that I’m putting on my skin.”
Her latest endeavour is offering workshops teaching how to make soap at home.
“Soap making is not a mystery. People say, ‘Oh, you’re giving away all your secrets,’ but I prefer to empower people to be self-sufficient,” she said.
“You have used cooking oil in the kitchen, you probably have sodium hydroxide in the laundry, and you have water. That’s all you need.”
Delizia counts herself among countless small businesses urging people in the region to buy local – “or bye-bye local”.
“We really need to focus on buying local because that’s how we support our community. If Covid has taught us anything, it’s the value of the local community.”
Visit delizianaturally.com.au to see the range and find stockists.
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