You likely have one or
more boxes of baking soda in your home. Baking
soda can be used for many purposes.
It cleans homes, deodorizes furniture,
exfoliates skin, kills mold, polishes silver,
and more. You can use it to wash your
hair, to make deodorant, and to take the stink
out of sweaty clothes.
Baking
soda comes out of the ground in the
form of minerals nahcolite and trona, which are
refined into soda ash (calcium carbonate), then
turned into baking soda (sodium bicarbonate),
among other things. Most of it comes from the
United States, which contains the world’s
largest trona deposit. Nahcolite, a naturally
occurring sodium bicarbonate, is often found in
evaporated lake basins. It is also mined in
Botswana, Kenya, Uganda, Turkey,
and Mexico.
Glass-making
consumes about half of the soda ash and
the chemical industry uses about a quarter of
the output. Other uses include soap, paper
manufacturing, and water treatment.