How washing your hands can save a rainforest

If there’s anything the green movement has taught us, it’s that we don’t know exactly what ingredients go into our cosmetics. Or if we do read the fine print on the packaging, it doesn’t indicate how each component is sourced.

Take soap for instance. One of the main ingredients in this bath regular is palm oil. Sounds safe enough — vegetable-based palm oil should get more nods from PETA than the animal fat that some companies still actually use. Right? Apparently not.

If you check up on UK fresh cosmetic brand Lush’s new “Wash Your Hands off Palm” campaign, you would know that palm oil is probably one of the dirtiest worst-kept secrets of a world that’s now obsessed with everything bio and natural.

Rowena Bird, co-owner and international retail director and product creator of Lush, was recently in Manila where she disclosed that palm oil production is one of the most devastating processes to the rainforest and natural ecosystem.

Ninety percent of the world’s palm oil is sourced from Indonesia and Malaysia. A few years ago, Lush made a trip to Indonesia where they learned and saw how producing palm oil gravely affects the Indonesian rainforests, wildlife, particularly the orangutans, and the indigenous people called Orang Rimba, a tribe that has lived in the Indonesian Sumatran forests for hundreds of years. But because of the high demand for palm oil, the Sumatran rainforest have been cleared — with the permission of the Indonesian government — to make way for oil plantations, most of which encroach on the land of the Orang Rimba. Many of them are now forced off their land and forced to squat along the Trans-Sumatran Highway. 

Similarly, orangutans who thrive in the jungles of Sumatra and Borneo, are affected. Rowena reveals that nearly 90 percent of the orangutan habitat has already disappeared; it is estimated that within 15 years 98 percent of the rainforests of Indonesia and Malaysia will be gone. “The Orang Rimbo people and the orangutans are losing their homes. They live there,” says Rowena. “It’s like knocking down huge blocks of condominiums where people live and not replacing them with anything.”

Realizing that the use of palm oil in their soaps contributes to this ecosystem destruction, Lush worked for almost three years with Kay’s, a leading manufacturer

Tree’s a crowd: All profits from Lush’s palm-free Jungle Soap go to help support and save orangutans in Indonesia whose habitats have been devastated by the clearing of rainforest to make way for palm oil plantations.

of soap base from the UK, to come up with an entirely new formula that will render palm oil obsolete in all their soaps. “At first, we didn’t have any lather, the colors were changing. It was awful. We persevered to get our new soap base right and now we’re back to having good soaps with everything — the lather, color, fragrance — just right.” And in lieu of palm oil, Lush combined other vegetable-based oils that don’t have a destructive impact on the environment. Now the new palm-free base is made of rapeseed, coconut and sunflower.

You barely notice the palm-free difference. Honey, I Washed the Kids is still the same toffee-scented family bar it’s always been. Sandstone is still the best exfoliating import from the beaches of Rio de Janeiro, and Summer Pudding, one of the brand’s best-selling cherry and almond-scented hand and body soaps, still smells as sweet and delicious as ever.

The difference is not to us but to the people and animals who will benefit from the change and keep their habitats. “By switching to a palm-free base, we were able to save 250,000 liters of oil,” reveals Rowena.

Lush has also created a product, the Jungle Soap, a bright green bar, palm-free though shaped like a palm tree, that smells like the jungle just after rain: fresh, vibrant and invigorating. All the profits made from the Jungle Soap will go to organizations that support and help protect the orangutans and the Indonesian rainforests such as the Sumatran Orangutan Society, the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation, Friends of Earth (FoE) and Greenpeace. This green soap also helps fund the OranguBus, which teaches people about the importance of the rainforest and the orangutan. Money also goes to fund sanctuaries that take care of orphaned orangutans whose parents have been murdered with the clearing of the rainforests.

 “It’s a hard thing to get out of since palm oil is used in so many areas,” Rowena laments. The cosmetics industry only uses about six to seven percent of the palm oil produced in the world. Many are used as biodiesel, for food (chocolate, biscuits, margarine all use palm oil in varying quantities) and for cooking.

But small steps, when all done together, can impact in a huge way. And if 250,000 liters of palm oil left unprocessed ensures that one or two orangutans will remain safe, then Lush’s “small” contribution would have made enough of a difference.

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Lush’s Jungle Soap and other palm-free soaps are available at Lush Greenbelt, Glorietta, Mall of Asia, Bonifacio High Street. Lush is exclusively distributed by Stores Specialists, Inc.