Surfactants usually form a single layer of molecules at the surface of water. We have shown that under certain conditions more than one layer may form. in which case the system seems to become a powerful wetting agent (it will wet Teflon). A whole range of useful technological properties would follow from this, e.g. more effective detergency, and since the phenomenon seems to be associated with more charged ions such as calcium and aluminium, hard water would enhance detergency in contrast to the usual reduction. An added advantage would be to do this with renewable surfactants. The methyl ester sulphonates are renewables from palm oil and we have shown that the C14 methyl ester has a rich multilayer surface phase diagram with aluminium. The C18 (isostearate) is also renewable, it will be much more surface active, and its branched structure should bring extra variety to the multilayer