Coco-Glucoside
INCI name: Coco-Glucoside
Purposes: Surfactant, Cleansing Agent
A mild sugar-based cleanser made from coconut and glucose. One of the three gentle surfactants we use instead of sulfates.
Coco-glucoside belongs to the alkyl polyglucoside family, surfactants built by joining a fatty alcohol from coconut to a sugar from corn or wheat starch. Both halves are renewable and both biodegrade readily.
The reason it matters is what it replaces. Sulfates such as SLS clean extremely well, which is precisely the problem: they strip the skin lipids along with the dirt. That tight, squeaky feeling after washing is barrier disruption, not cleanliness.
Alkyl polyglucosides are non-ionic and much gentler. They are used in baby washes and in cleansers formulated for compromised skin. They also foam less dramatically than sulfates, which is a formulation trade-off we accepted deliberately. Lather is a marketing cue, not a measure of cleaning.
We use three surfactants together rather than one. Coco-glucoside does the primary cleansing, coco-betaine builds structure and further reduces irritancy, and sodium cocoyl glutamate cleans at a pH close to the skin’s own. A blend at low concentrations is consistently gentler than a single surfactant at high concentration.
