Surfactants are present in most aspects of our daily life: in the soap or gel we use when showering in the morning, in the creams and cosmetics we spread on our skin, in many of the foods we have from breakfast to night, in the detergents we use in our washing machine and dishwasher, and in some of the medications we may be prescribed. They are also present in the processes used to prepare the clothes we wear, and the metals and plastics in most of the tools, appliances, cars, and so forth, we use. It should therefore not come as a surprise that research on, and developments of, new surfactants has always been very active in spite of the fact that surfactant catalogs list hundreds if not thousands of surfactants of all types—anionic, cationic, zwitterionic, and nonionic. The world production of surfactants is probably close to 10 million tons per year, worth several billions of dollars. Any new surfactant with novel properties or improved performances or capable of improving the economics of a given process would translate into savings of millions of dollars. In addition, new surfactants with lower toxicity or environmentfriendly characteristics have a promising future, as new regulations that will most likely be enacted in the coming years will require the surfactants used in formulations to have a lower level of toxicity and less impact on the environment and to be more easily degraded by natural biological processes.