Here at Valley Mist almost all of our products are palm oil free, but what exactly does that mean? And why is it a good thing? In this blog post I will do my best to answer some of your questions about palm oil and its use in skincare.
What is Palm Oil?
Palm oil is pretty much exactly what it says on the tin; oil that is derived from the fruits of oil palms. It is also edible, colourless, odourless and resistant to oxidisation, making it an extremely popular and useful oil in food and cosmetic industries. In addition, palm oil is a very high yield crop, meaning that more oil is produced per one tree that is planted than with many other crops. This makes it very popular as a crop because a lot of product can be produced from only a small number of trees.
So, why is palm oil viewed so negatively?
As a result of its usefulness and versatility, the sheer scale of the demand for palm oil has a drastic affect on the environment. The first and perhaps most obvious of these affects is deforestation.
Huge expanses of rainforest have been, and still are being, cleared away in order to make space for palm oil plantations. This has devastating affects on local ecosystems, as well as the rest of the world, contributing enormously to global warming. Rainforests themselves are enormous stores of carbon and so cutting down and removing them causes a massive release of carbon into the atmosphere.
Additionally, this huge destruction of rainforests inevitably contributes to species extinction through loss of biodiversity, loss of habitat and loss of food sources.
If you would like more information on palm oil and the effect that it has on the environment, the BBC have compiled a useful guide in this article.
The Good News (Spoiler: Palm Oil Free Valley Mist Skincare)!
The good news is that almost all of our products at Valley Mist are palm oil free, helping to reduce the demand for palm oil. If you are super knowledgeable about palm oil and its many forms, you might have noticed that several of our products contain glycerine, a product that is often derived from palm oil. However, the glycerine that we use in our products is instead derived from rapeseed oil.
There are only two exceptions to this rule in the Valley Mist skincare range; the micellar waters and the cleansing grains are made using one ingredient that contains palm oil. Nonetheless, the palm oil used is RSPO (Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil) certified (a certification that is supported by the WWF) meaning that it is sustainably produced, and also Eco-certified, meaning that it is approved for use in organic products. The specifics of RSPO certification can be found through the links to the RSPO and WWF websites above, but essentially it means that the palm oil produced is free from deforestation and works to reduce the affects of palm oil production on the environment.
If you’d like to support the Valley Mist sustainable skincare mission you can shop our range through the link below – if you’re new here and don’t know where to start, the lip balms have been a customer favourite since day one!
