Are there Palm Oil Free Beauty Brands?
After viewing the BBC series on rescuing baby orangutans in Borneo, and realizing that deforestation was occurring in order to plant palm oil plantations, I ran to the bathroom and began reading labels. I knew which beauty brands had been the cheapest and they were the first ones I checked. To my horror, despite words like “natural” and “organic” I was appalled to notice the finer print. I had many products that contained palm oil or palm derivatives. I wondered how I had fallen into the trap of purchasing questionable items when I pride myself on buying the best skincare products on the market, using only those that are natural, not tested on animals and are from sustainable sources. I realized that it wasn’t entirely my problem as a consumer. The problem stemmed from labeling / marketing. Even the best skincare products have to keep their prices low enough for consumers and therefore source ingredients from the cheapest plantations – and although they may be natural, not harmful to the skin, not made with chemicals, and not tested on animals, the end result was the same. Why? Because many of the top beauty brands use abbreviations, the botanical name or an acronym that’s in fact a palm oil derivative, precisely so consumers won’t know. They need to keep their costs low so they use the cheapest emulsifiers and emollients from Malaysian and Indonesian palm oil plantations, then state they’re natural – which is true.
Are there beauty brands with good skincare products that are palm oil free? Yes. And those are the companies we should be supporting. We can even support those that are trying to use ethical sources or have made an effort to buy from members of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil. Lush is one example of a company that’s trying, so is the Body Shop (although not all their products are eco-friendly since they’ve joined L’Oreal). Aveda is one of the large beauty brands that tries to source their ingredients ethically, and Weleda can be trusted for eye creams, body lotions and a variety of the best skincare products that use botanical ingredients.
