Sustainability of Scrub the Love
Based on my research from each of all the ingredients in this recipe (which you can read about by clicking on each ingredient in the ingredient list, or by browsing the ingredients page), I have created the following summary table. (🟢= sustainable ingredient; 🟡= unsustainable, but has many positive factors; 🟠= unsustainable, concerning; ⚫= very unsustainable.)
Remember: these are my ratings, other, potentially less honest people may give more favourable ratings to certain ingredients.
|
Ingredient |
Rating |
The Good |
The Bad |
|
Organic Sunflower Glycerin |
🟡 |
Palm-oil alternative. Sunflowers are hardy, rotation crops that support soil health. Glycerin is a byproduct of oil production (waste reduction). |
Energy-intensive hydrolysis process to separate the glycerin. |
|
Homemade Banana Skin Powder |
🟢 |
Ultimate Upcycling. Turns agricultural food waste into a cosmetic ingredient (zero extra water/land). Reduces landfill/composting load. |
Quality control is difficult |
|
Organic ground almond |
🟠 |
Natural exfoliator which does not cause plastic pollution (like microbeads) |
Water Thirsty. Requires massive irrigation (mostly grown in drought-prone regions). Commercial pollination stresses bee populations. |
|
Swiss healing stone |
🟡 |
Locally produced (low transport emissions). |
Mining process could be damaging. |
|
Organic Coconut Oil |
🟠 |
High yield per acre (better than other oil crops). Tree crop (carbon sequestration). |
Transport distance. Heavy product to ship globally. Farmers often face extreme poverty (requires Fair Trade). |
|
Local Organic Forest Honey |
🟢 |
Highest Biodiversity. Forest honey comes from diverse flowering plants, not monocultures. Supports local wild bees/pollinators. Lowest transport. |
Jar should be reused. |
|
Organic Jojoba Oil |
🟠 |
Great for soil stability; native plant (Peru); pesticide-free. |
Water stress. Grown in desert regions where aquifer depletion is a major crisis. |
|
Organic Cinnamon |
⚫ |
Cinnamon farming (tree bark) can be sustainable if bark is harvested carefully. |
Deforestation Risk. Demand can lead to non-sustainable harvesting or conversion of native forest to plantation. Requires careful sourcing/certification. |
|
Organic Vanilla essential oil |
⚫ |
High value crop for developing nations (Madagascar). |
Extremely labor-intensive (hand-pollinated). Crop is very sensitive to climate change. |
It is important to note that this is a simplification of the many complex and often interrelated issues 🤯 when it comes to assessing the sustainability of a product, and that for most ingredients I can only make generalisations as, despite my best efforts, 🔎I don’t know much about the exact provenance of my ingredients. Nonetheless, the most problematic ingredients seem to be cinnamon, vanilla essential oil and ground almond (lower rating but much more of it used in the recipe than the other, perhaps more damaging ingredients).
What about the jar?
Embrace the Zest comes in a glass jar with a Bakelite (type of plastic) lid. The sustainability of this jar depends entirely on our actions ♻️when the jar is empty: the glass, which can be recycled infinitely, is fantastic; the Bakelite lid is problematic, as it can’t be recycled, and should be reused until it falls apart before being discarded.🗑️
What can I do to make it less unsustainable?
I will test this recipe without the use of cinnamon, as I believe this will not substantially change the smell or feel of the body scrub. 🔬🤔
Additionally I would like to research alternatives to ground almond as a gentle natural exfoliator. 🔎✨
Watch this space, or subscribe to my mailing list 💌 to be the first to hear how it all goes!
What can you do to make it less unsustainable?
As with everything, sustainability starts with using only what you need and not wasting. Therefore, please use your lotion fully before buying a new one. 🙏When it is finished, return the jar to me (here’s how) and to thank you for helping to reduce waste I will give you a 5CHF voucher to use on any Kayan Naturkosmetik products.🎁
Want to do more?
Together we have done a lot to reduce our environmental impact when it comes to this body butter! 🥳 But if you really want to do more, you could offset the impact of your body butter by donating a few francs to one of these NGOs:
- Waterkeeper Alliance: 🌊 targeting water scarcity and pollution (problematic for almond oil production).
- Rainforest Alliance: 🐸targeting tropical deforestation (problematic for cinnamon essential oil and vanilla essential oil productions)
- WWF: 🐼 targeting nature conservation worldwide.
