The Clovelly Soap Company only uses Certified Sustainable Palm Oil (CSPO) from New Britain Palm Oil, one of the world leaders in sustainable Palm oil practices supporting both the environment and local small holders.   They were one of the first companies to produce a sustainability report which can be viewed on their website.  They are also the first Palm oil producer to be awarded the Rainforest Alliance Sustainable Pathfinder Award

We noticed a lot of soap makers boycotting Palm Oil and with it being an issue of huge concern for both ourselves and our customers we decided to investigate all the oils we use before making a knee jerk decision.

With advice from leading environmental organisations and charities such as WWF & Greenpeace we firmly believe that rather than a boycott, we need to support the production of genuinely sustainable palm oil.  

The global demand for oil will not abate and Palm oil is the most efficient oil on the planet in terms of Land, Fertiliser and Pesticide use. 

To give you a clearer picture Palm Oil produces approximately 5950 litres per hectare.  The closest to that is Coconut oil which produces 2690 Litres per hectare and Rape oil produces 1190 litres per hectare. Link to data here

Our concern, which is shared by WW, Greenpeace and many charities is that the trend for companies to boycott palm oil could lead to a catastrophic increase in deforestation as the alternatives are so inefficient.  Read about WWF and its view on Palm Oil Boycotts here.

Only environmentally responsible trade and production can minimize risk of further deforestation and damage to wildlife, habitats, local people and their economies dependant on sustainable palm oil revenue. 

While researching Palm oil we decided to look into other oils, we discovered that many coconut oil producers use Pig Tailed Macaques to harvest coconuts,  this practice imprisons these beautiful animals and keeps them from living a natural life in the wild in social groups.   Currently there is not enough awareness of this practice and therefore no demand for cruelty free coconut oil and other coconut products.  We would like to change that by making customers more aware so that the subject reaches producers and we can source a genuinely cruelty free product in the future.   Our Olive oil is harvested during the daytime by mechanical means to avoid the harm to songbirds roosting.   We recently stopped using Indian Sandalwood because it is such an unsustainable product, we now use West Indian Sandalwood (Amyris) which has a similar sweet woody scent but is not unsustainable.  We constantly research our ingredients and packaging to ensure that out little business treads as lightly on this planet as possible.

We also have a Zero waste policy with our products where we sell scrap bags of soap offcuts, give free offcut samples with our orders and donate to local charities to ensure that no soap goes to waste no matter how small.  

Our packaging for our soap is FSC paper printed in the UK with eco friendly inks and we have replaced the glue that we use with a cellulose sticker that is 100% compostable in a proper hot home system.   We use glass and tin for our products and continue to look for innovative packaging ideas that do less harm to the planet.