You know from palm oil. High in saturated fat, it’s in certain cooking oils, soap products and processed food. Produced in Africa, Malaysia and Indonesia, palm oil is huge business, especially in Indonesia. Unfortunately, it’s also an industry that delivers a major deforestation bitchslap as new plantations continue to crop up.
This month, LUSH launches new initiatives to help lessen the company’s environmental palm print. All LUSH soaps are now made with a palm-free base, a formula that took the company three years to perfect. (They’re offering to use their experience to help other companies looking to reduce their own palm-oil use, too.)
A limited-edition Soap Wall ($19.95) sampler of nine best-sellers made without palm is now available, as is a limited-edition Jungle Soap ($5.95). Proceeds from Jungle Soap sales are earmarked for the Rainforest Foundation, which assists tribes in protecting their homes from palm-industry expansion. The LUSH Charity Pot is helping too: for the duration of the awareness campaign, every cent of the hand-and-body lotion’s $20.95 price is going to the The World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA). The WSPA in turn is giving a hand to the Borneo Orangutan Society, an organization that protects orangutans endangered by shrinking rainforests.
And whaddya know: the staff’s all over this. She loves the idea that switching soap is another way to lessen the sting of her own palm print on the planet. Props.
LUSH is available at LUSH boutiques and lush.com. In addition to a smaller palm print, for Canadians LUSH also has a smaller enviro footprint because the North American LUSH supply is made in Canada. Images courtesy of LUSH.
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{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi Janine, I have the Lemonade Stand award for you on my blog. Please accept
Hi Janine, speaking as a person from the region, the move to stop using Palm Oil is hurting the individual farmer very badly. Yes slash and burn methods are terrible and they cause an annual haze over in this part of the region. But gradually farmers are being educated to stop using the method. Sime Darby, the largest oil plantation owner in Malaysia, has promised to only employ environmentally friendly agricultural methods. We buy community trade items without once realising that for many small farmsteads and villages throughout southeast asia, Palm Oil is community trade. Some parties have even accused the US of painting the commodity blacker than it is to advance the sale of canola, peanut, corn and sunflower oils which they themselves produce. The truth is, companies should push for environmentally-friendly certified palm oils, not boycott the ingredient altogether as it’s hurting the smaller farmsteads without helping them be greener. The larger companies can find other avenues and will withstand due to mass volume but the smaller ones will starve. In the interest of full disclosure my mother inherited a small palm oil plantation from her mother. We are not reliant on its produce but have first-hand knowledge of the challenges facing a small-plantation owner. We do not employ slash and burn methods.
Oops so sorry to comment-spam I just wanted to add that ironically, the Brits introduced Palm Oil to the region when they colonised us. And they introduced the slash and burn method. When you add that to the fact that Lush is English…
Thank you SO much for your comments, Kahani. I was thinking about exactly that as I wrote the post, wondering how this campaign and any others that might follow would impact the people actually doing the work. That the farmers would suffer if the palm-oil industry were significantly affected did occur to me. And that LUSH intends to profit from moving away from palm-oil ingredients is a given — it’s business after all.
I decided that by highlighting the palm-oil industry and its problems, LUSH’s initiatives would perhaps inadvertently instigate other kinds of changes, such as better ways of doing business, and, more importantly, innovative ways to help workers to prosper while lessening industry impact on the environment. I didn’t think to put my reservations in my post outright — mentioning the “staff’s” enthusiasm rather than mine is as far as I went — so I’m beyond glad that you commented and raised the issue. Thank you, thank you.
I’d love to accept, Halifax, only the “select profile” thing NEVER works for me! I tried five times to thank you on your blog, but no go.
So I answer you here: Thanks for the honour :-)
*hugs* =)
I’m glad you opened the forum for these issues to be raised. If there’s no money to be made no one’s going to bother educating. If however there is a financial incentive to being environmentally friendly just watch how quickly they’ll go green!
Kahani does raise some important points to consider but I would like to add my two cents worth. Neighbouring farmers who aren’t planting oil-palm or people with fruit orchards near plantations are complaining because their land is being affected. Crops have stopped growing since the plantations came along. These farmers are losing their livelihoods. Not to mention, plantations are affecting acres of rainforests as well.
Yes, many of the small-plantation owners do not bother using environmentally friendly methods because they don’t have the resources or can’t be bothered to. Sime Darby is the exception but they are a huge company with an R&D dept.
Small holdings simply don’t have that capacity and none of the authorities in Malaysia (at least, those in the area which I am familiar with) seem to be making a hard push towards environmental awareness. Oil-palm is a bandwagon which many farmers are jumping on without thinking or knowing about the long-term effects.
Its not the companies who have to pushed, but the authorities as well to make sure that these small-plantations have access to environmentally-friendly methods which they can afford.
Thanks, Eli. I need to know more! How are existing plantations affecting land around them? How is it stopping other crop growth? Is it expansion that hurts the rainforests, or palm-oil harvesting in general? So many questions…!
I just looked up this page to forward to a friend and realised that you left some questions.
Basically, oil-palm grows quite rapidly so it zaps the soil quite rapidly of nutrients without putting anything back in. Once the soil within the plantations have been depleted of nutrients, the oil-palm starts taking nutrients from neighbouring land (‘cos plants know no boundaries) which deprives surrounding crops and the rainforest of the nutrients they need to grow. And once the rainforest starts dying, its fair game for the loggers to come in or for big companies to buy land from the small farmers because their crops aren’t growing.
A family friend was mourning the fact that her grandchildren wouldn’t have a chance to play in or eat fruit from their family orchard as the trees have stopped bearing fruit. Its quite heartbreaking, really. Having your own piece of land is quite important from where I come from so the idea of losing your ancestral holdings… *wince*
Thanks so much for the additional info, Eli. I’m going to do some more research. I need to know more!