Greenwash Watch: Lush Greenwash Soap is Palm Oil Free

And it's scented with frankincence and oakmoss - nice!

-Stephanie
Cleaning-Green.Net

I love their solid shampoos - I've not added a shampoo bottle to landfill for 4 years now! I love my little reusable shampoo tin

I'm gald they are not using palm oil from these giant corporations, but this article makes it sound like palm oil is bad, period. That's like saying coffee is bad for similar reasons, drink something else. But buying fair-trade orgainic shade-grown coffee is an option (not getting into the transportaion issue here). There are small organic palm farmers out there too, which are fighting for their survival against the same corporate monsters. If they don't sell their oil, they'll have to sell their land to the same demon this soap company is trying to not support.

Plus, these small farm oil palms might be the "shade" in "shade grown chocolate."

Oil palms also creates the most oil per acre, and is used in the south pacific for bio-diesel. If you're going to have mixed-use land, oil palm is good one to mix in.

Palm oil grown in Mylasia and other areas of the south pacific are terrible beause of the exploitation of child labor, unethical practices, conventional growing methods, and huge monocropping plantations. That said, palm oil is a miracle oil. It has more benefits than any other oil out there. Read about it at junglepi.com

Palm oil coming from small co-ops and wild areas can help certain communities powerfully.

So when a soap company decides to make a decision like this giving an oil a bad name instead of a particular region, it makes me wonder how much research they actually do in their product development.

It's interesting that LUSH is even talking about anything to do with being "green" or natural.... take a look at their ingredients-- Sodium Lauryl Sulfate, FD&C Colors, propylene glycol... nothing green about any of those ingredients! (and all of those are in their "greenwash" soap).

It is a remarkable and landmark decision for Lush to avoid palm oil in all its products...something no other major cosmetics or skin care company has been able to commit to yet. While we, The Borneo Orangutan Survival (BOS) Foundation UK, sit on the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil in the effort to promote that what palm oil is produced will someday be produced more sustainably, we certainly feel the best solution would be to not use palm oil altogether. However, for consumers it is so difficult for them to choose products without palm oil or its derivatives. Vague labeling as vegetable oil does not help, and for every day consumers to be educated about all the names that palm oil can be described as , especially in beauty care products, is a tall order. And to expect consumers to read through ingredients labels on so many products is unrealistic. Therefore, I feel Lush have done an amazing thing by making it as simple as possible for the consumer to know that they have not been made unwitting participants in what can only be called the genocide of one of our nearest cousins: the orangutan.
Thank you, Lush, for doing your bit!
Michelle Desilets
Founder and Executive Director
Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation UK