What’s In Your Soap? The Body Shop Pioneers The Switch To Sustainable Palm Oil
(New York, NY – July 17, 2007)
We all love the luxury of a beautifully fragrant bar of soap so much so that The Body Shop alone sells more than 14.5 million bars in over 2,200 stores across 57 countries worldwide every year. But who would have thought that buying a simple beauty bar could be so important in affecting the livelihoods of millions of people in the less developed world?
Sadly, the truth is that when you buy these much loved little cleansing items, you could be contributing to:
• devastating the world’s ancient rainforest• affecting delicate ecosystems
• endangering animal species, such as orangutans, rhinoceros, elephants and tigers
• affecting the rights of indigenous populations
This is all a result of the production of palm oil used in many cosmetics and toiletries, sourced from Indonesia and Malaysia where clearance of the forest for palm oil plantations has increased six fold since the mid 80s, and is still rising.
The Body Shop felt the need to do something about this, and as a result has sourced the first supply of sustainable palm oil from a plantation in Colombia. The great news is that all of The Body Shop soaps will now contain sustainably-sourced palm oil. This switch, now offers hope for the future of endangered species and a strong belief that the loss of communities can be prevented.
Via the move of The Body Shop to the sustainable option, the company is making strides to improve environmental conditions with the implementation of an internationally accepted set of criteria and certification for palm oil within the beauty industry.
Matthias Diemer, palm oil expert, WWF Switzerland, commented on the exciting move, “The Body Shop is the first cosmetics company to introduce sustainable palm oil into its product lines. We see this as the start of the growth of sustainable palm oil in this sector, and hope many more companies will follow suit.”
So the next time you step into a store and buy from The Body Shop’s array of sweet-smelling soaps, you can be secure in the knowledge that not only will your skin be clean and delicately scented, but you also could be helping to protect the world’s ancient rainforests and their ecosystems, as well as many endangered species that are facing extinction. And if others follow the lead of The Body Shop, sustainable rainforests could literally be in the palm of our hands.
The Body Shop’s soap retails for $3.50 and is available in all retailer stores and on the internet at www.thebodyshop.com.
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