At Snarky Hippie, we choose to craft our handmade soap without palm oil. Some soap crafters might call us mad. You see, palm oil has a long history in soap-making and many consider it the holy grail of a good bar of soap. Palm oil is a vegetable oil sourced from the fruit of oil palm trees, which thrive in the warm and humid conditions of tropical environments. It’s a versatile oil that can give products a longer shelf-life and is found in as much as 50% of packaged products we buy in the supermarket, including food, personal care products, cleaning products, and fuels, just to name a few. However, the use of palm oil is a controversial one.
Palm oil has been a major driver of the deforestation of our world’s most biodiverse forests, which has had devastating results. Due to its cheap cost and large demand, every day acres and acres of rainforests are being destroyed to make way for more plantations designated for palm oil cultivation. In addition to destroying natural habitats, this also releases greenhouse gasses that contribute to climate change into our environment. In fact, the widespread destruction of these forests contributed to the largest single-year global increase in carbon emissions in two millennia.
The destruction of these forests has also contributed to the loss of natural habitat for native species. The already critically endangered Sumatran tiger, orangutan, Borneo pygmy elephant, and Sumatran rhino are being pushed closer to extinction due to this deforestation. Indonesia’s rainforests, the biggest suppliers of palm oil, are one of the most biologically rich landscapes with 10% of the world’s plants, 12% of mammals, and 17% bird species and one of the highest deforestation rates in the world. These forests are the last place on earth that some species still roam.
Palm oil plantations have also contributed to the brutal displacement of the indigenous population who depend on these environments for their food, water, and livelihoods. Labor abuses also tend to be common. Workers on these plantations have suffered human rights violations, have been exposed to toxic chemicals, work in unsafe conditions, and are not paid fairly. Many of these workers are children.
In 2004 a global initiative, the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), was formed to set specific standards to combat the issues that palm oil cultivation has caused. RSPO’s mission is to set standards that must be met for palm oil to be considered sustainably derived. Unfortunately, under 20% of palm oil is sustainably produced and human rights violations still occur on even sustainable and organic plantations.
These reasons have led us to the decision to be a palm-free brand. In the words of Wendell Berry… “The Earth is what we all have in common”.