New Soap Recipe - No Palm or Palm Kernal

This has been weighing very heavy on my mind for a long time. It seems that I've finally been successful in creating a soap without the use of  Palm oil or Palm Kernal oil.

After a few years of watching what the manufacturing of these oils does to the global environment, I've decided that even though I am a small user of these oils, I should be able to eliminate them from my soaps and contribute just a little less to this problem. 

How does palm oil destroy the rainforests?

Expansion of palm oil in Indonesia

Since oil palms need a rainforest climate – consistently high humidity and temperatures – and a lot of land, plantations are often established at the expense of rainforests. About 90 percent (2011) of the world’s palm oil is currently being produced in Malaysia and Indonesia. Indonesia’s oil palm plantations alone already cover nine million hectares, an area the size of the state of Maine. 26 million hectares are projected for 2025.

According to a report published in 2007 by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), palm oil plantations are currently the leading cause of rainforest destruction in Malaysia and Indonesia. Today, rainforest area the equivalent of 300 soccer fields is being destroyed every hour.

This gives rise to numerous problems for the climate, environment, and people living in the forest:

- CO2 emissions – In preparing rainforest land for a palm oil plantation, the most valuable trees are cut down and removed first. What remains is cleared by burning. If the forest was on peatland – as is the case in much of Indonesia – the land is drained. Peatlands store vast quantities of carbon, and the conversion of a single hectare of Indonesian peatland rainforest releases up to 6,000 tons of CO2. Tropical deforestation is currently responsible for about 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, making it a significant contributor to climate change (see 4. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC).

- Loss of biodiversity – Indonesia's rainforests and peatlands are among the world's most species-rich environments and home to numerous endangered plants and animals, such as orangutans, Sumatran tigers and Bornean rhinos. The destruction of natural habitats deprives the animals of the basis for their existence, causing an irreversible loss of biological diversity.
Orangutans are particularly vulnerable because they are dependent on large contiguous forest areas. In search of food, they often get lost in the plantations, where they are regarded as pests. According to the Centre for Orangutan Protection (COP), at least 1,500 orangutans were clubbed to death by palm oil plantation workers in 2006 alone. According to the UN, there is a risk that no wild orangutans will remain outside of protected areas by 2020.

I have replaced the Palm Kernal Oil I have used for years in my soaps with Shea Butter and Jojoba Oils. 

The result is pretty darn good if I may say so myself. Here is the latest batch of Lavender Soaps using these new oils.

All future soap recipes will be made using these new oils instead of Palm Kernal and I can assure you that they will be just as luxurious as our previous recipe.

I am very excited!

T