So how did we make our Palm free base?
Lush worked in partnership with a leading UK soap-base manufacturer Kay’s, to develop the worlds’ first commercially available palm-free soap base.

What is wrong with Palm Oil?
Lush has been looking into the environmental and social concerns surrounding the use of Palm Oil in cosmetics, food and biofuels for several years now. Our trip to Indonesia revealed how Palm Oil plantations all over Asia are destroying some of the most important habitats of our planet.

Why are the Orangutans under threat?
Lush worked in partnership with a leading UK soap-base manufacturer Kay’s, to develop the worlds’ first commercially available palm-free soap base.

The Facts on Palm Oil

Finding a Workable Solution

What can you do?
With your action and support we can secure a better future for the Sumatran orangutan and help protect our planet’s most important habitats.

So how did we make our palm free base?
It was no easy task, It took us a year to get it just right because it’s pretty tricky. for almost a year Lush worked in partnership with a leading UK soap-base manufacturer, Kay’s, to develop the worlds’ first commercially available palm-free soap base. 

We are currently making our soaps by combining Sunflower oil, rapeseed oil and coconut oil with sodium hydroxide and water. They are mixed together and boiled to accelerate the saponification process. Salt is added at this stage to separate the soap from the mixture. Glycerine can be filtered off at this point but ours is added back in to the soap mixture, to make it really lovely and moisturising.

This whole saponification process takes about a day, when the soap begins to set, known as the trace stage, the soap is sprayed into a vacuum vessel where most of the liquid content is removed. The finished soap is then compacted and extruded to produce dry noodles.

We use these noodles as a base for all our soap range. We add to our ground breaking soap base, a variety of ingredients from a whole range of fruits, juices, essential oils, exfoliants, milk, honey, seaweed, herbs, oils, and flowers to create our beautiful Lush soaps.

The first soap to be made with this new formula was called “Greenwash” and was launched it as part of the Lush Christmas 2007 range which we sold through Lush stores and mail order. The product was successful, and Lush has now switched all of its UK soap production to this new palm-free base, thereby reducing its annual palm oil use by approximately 250,000 kilograms. Other Lush manufacturing facilities, in North America, Croatia, Japan and Australia will make the switch to the new base by September 2008.

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Why are the Oranguatans under threat?
The Orangutan, a highly intelligent and gentle animal and the only “red” ape were once widespread throughout the forests of Asia, now the orangutans are confined to just two islands, Sumatra and Borneo. The Sumatran orangutan has been classified as "Critically Endangered" by the IUCN, the World Conservation Unare.
The Orangutan who share 96.4% of our DNA is named by the Indigenous peoples of Indonesia and Malaysia "Orang Hutan" which literally translates as "Person of the Forest".
Orangutans, usually live up to 45 years in their natural habitat and only produce 3 offspring in a lifetime, that’s on average one baby per 7-8 years. The rate at which Orangutans reproduce means they find it really hard to recover from habitat intrusion and hunting.
So with imminent threats to their habitat, it is estimated 98% of Indonesian and Malaysian rainforests will be gone in only 15 years time, it is critical that we address this problem now. Current estimates see the Orangutan extinct within the next 10 years!
The lowland rainforests of Southeast Asia and the habitat of the orangutan are being converted from forests into palm oil plantations, and this is occurring on a massive scale. So not only are we loosing one of the world's biodiversity hotspots, we are also loosing the orangutan. Even protected areas of Borneo and Sumatra are not safe, work continues here as well, In fact the last 20 years has seen the loss of 80% of the oranguatans’ habitat. Orangutan populations have been halved in the past 15 years, and from a total remaining population of between 50,000 and 60,000 animals, an estimated 5,000 to 10,000 are killed each year.

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The Facts on Palm  -

Some of the problems with palm oil production are:   

• Ninety per cent of the world’s palm-oil exports come from the oil-palm plantations of Indonesia and Malaysia.*
• Most of these plantations are on the Indonesian islands of Sumatra and Borneo (part of which is in Malaysia).*
• Borneo has lost half its forest cover, while Sumatra has lost more than 70 per cent.*
• The palm-oil industry has set up 6.5 million hectares of oil-palm plantations across Sumatra and Borneo, but is probably responsible for the destruction of 10 million hectares of rainforest.*
• Indonesia will appear in the 2008 Guinness Book of World Records, with the dubious “honour” of being the country with the fastest rate of deforestation in the world. The entry will read: "Of the 44 countries which collectively account for 90 percent of the world's forests, the country which pursues the highest annual rate of deforestation is Indonesia with 1.8 million hectares (4.4 million acres) of forest destroyed each year between 2000-2005."^
• Indonesia aims to almost double the 6.5m hectares under oil palm plantation in the next five to eight years and triple it by 2020.+
• According to the United National Environment Programme, it is estimated that within 15 years 98% of the rainforests of Indonesia and Malaysia will be gone.±
• The lowland forest that the oil-palm industry favours for conversion is the only remaining habitat of the orang-utan.*
• Almost 90 per cent of orang-utan habitat has now disappeared. Some orang-utan populations have been halved in the past 15 years, and from a total remaining population between 50,000 and 60,000 animals, an estimated 5,000 to 10,000 are killed each year.±
• Experts have identified a number of priority forest areas that are crucial for the continued existence of orang-utan in the wild. Within just one Indonesian province, Central Kalimantan, two-thirds of these are either about to be converted to oil palm, or are at high risk of conversion.*
• The oil-palm plantation business is the most conflict-ridden sector in Indonesia, and one of the most polluting. Plantations are often forcibly established on land traditionally owned by indigenous peoples, and plantation development has repeatedly been associated with violent conflict.*
• In many plantations, workers have to contend with low wages and appalling living conditions, so while the palm oil industry may create jobs and generate export revenue, but it can also trap entire communities in poverty.*
• Tropical deforestation due to agricultural expansion, logging and infrastructure development already contributes between 10 and 30 per cent of greenhouse global emissions.◊
• In addition, oil palm plantation companies in Indonesia have been identified as one of the chief culprits in setting forest fires over the last 10 years. These occur every year in Indonesia and release huge quantities of carbon into the atmosphere.◊
• In one of the worst fire incidents between 1997 and 1998 it is estimated that the emissions from the forest fires in Indonesia were equivalent to 40% of all global emissions from burning fossil fuels that year.◊
• Dutch pressure group Wetlands International found that as much as half the space created for new palm oil plantations was cleared by draining and burning peat-land, sending huge amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.±
• Estimates say Indonesia's peat-land fires generate 1,400m tonnes of carbon dioxide each year, contributing to its position as the world's third-largest producer of CO2.+
• One of the biggest potential growth sectors for palm oil is biofuel, but FoE say “even if the demand for palm oil as a biofuel or for biomass is directed at sustainably certified sources, when such a system is fully established, this new demand is highly likely to displace much of the current global demand elsewhere towards destructive plantation development, especially in Indonesia.”◊

Finding  a Workable Solution

Faced with these enormous problems, the immediate solutions available to us included:

1) Buying palm from sustainable sources

2) Eliminating palm from our products

Many of the groups involved in this issue are working toward establishing a certified sustainable palm scheme, with the RSPO being the governing and enforcing body.

However, there is a significant feeling of scepticism that the RSPO will not develop a scheme that is truly sustainable, that has the right checks and balances in place, and an effective way of monitoring the situation on the ground and ensuring compliance.

Considering a consumer boycott of palm oil was widely seen as impractical, given the enormous range of products containing palm, and there is a real fear that a boycott would also hurt those communities who rely on palm as their primary source of income.

There appears to be organic and sustainable palm available from South America, and although sourcing this for use in Lush products would remove us from contributing to the problems in Indonesia and Malaysia, it is debatable that doing this would help solve those problems.

There is a feeling amongst many that this is an almost insurmountable problem, given the quantities of palm being consumed and the potential extra demand that using palm as a biofuel would create.

There is no doubt that this is a massive industry, that palm producers and other key players are getting incredibly rich as a result (while the local workers get poorer) and that when such vast amounts of money are involved, there will always be people willing to look the other way and allow continued forest conversion and unchecked growth.

Cut Down on Palm, Not the Rainforest

It seems to us that the only way palm will ever be sustainable is if a level of consumption is reached that does not put such a strain on the environment. At present the demand for palm is too great, and the demand is growing. With this in mind, Lush decided to cut its use of palm by at least half.

This is what led us to develop the worlds’ first commercially available palm-free soap base.

Lush is now organising a public campaign to urge other manufacturers to cut their palm use by at least half, and engaging with NGOs and Industry by forming a collaborative working group called Actively Seeking Alternatives to Palm (ASAP).

Until global levels of palm use are cut dramatically, and plans to use palm in biofuel are scrapped entirely, there is little hope of a workable sustainable palm oil industry, and the future of the forests, animals and people of Borneo and Sumatra is bleak. 

 

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What can you do?

We can all encourage other manufacturers and retailers to cut their consumption of palm oil and tell elected representatives to oppose moves to mandate biofules in the EU.

Please support groups like Friends of the Earth (www.foe.org.uk) and The Sumatran Oragutan Society (www.orangutans-sos.org)

Lush supports The Sumatran Oragutan Society charity through sales of it’s Charity Pot . Every penny from your purchase of our Beautiful hand and body Lotion (except the V.A.T  which goes to the government) goes to good causes hand picked by us. Lush funding enabled them to buy a new van, the Orang-U-Van, which they use to visit local communities and educate them on the value of orangutans and preserving their natural habitat.   

 

 

* Friends of the Earth Report, Oil for Ape, September 2005

http://www.foe.co.uk/resource/reports/oil_for_ape_summary.pdf

+ The Guardian, Palm oil: the biofuel of the future driving an ecological disaster now, 4/4/07

http://environment.guardian.co.uk/energy/story/0,,2049667,00.html

^ Reuters, Indonesia deforestation fastest in world, 3/5/07

http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSJAK215106

± UNEP Rapid Response Assessment, The Last Stand of the Orang-utan, February 2007

http://www.unep-wcmc.org/resources/publications/LastStand.htm

◊ Friends of the Earth Briefing, The use of palm oil for biofuel and as biomass for energy, August 2006