EP75. How sustainable are essential oils?

[Music] Can essential oils be sustainable? Chances are you may not have considered the environmental impacts of the green beauty sector on essential oils as they are used in such teeny tiny quantities in cosmetic formulation. However, the gigantic boom in essential oil network marketing has placed huge pressure on the crops used to produce these amazingly potent botanical fragrance compounds. Can we really continue the way things are going? Now I frequently talk about some of the pressures faced by certain essential oil crops in my various public talks and I regularly hear from people who say that they had no idea this was even an issue. So I knew this was a topic we had to cover here on the green beauty conversations podcast to get people talking and thinking about solutions. In today's podcast I talked to Dr Sally Goldstone of Shea-Lick skincare with some pretty hard-hitting and controversial points that she wants to make to tell the world about essential oil sustainability. I'm sure that this podcast is going to get a lot of people fired up and I promise you for that reason alone you need to settle in and listen to this full episode. Welcome to Green Beauty Conversations, the podcast that challenges you to think about how you buy, use, make and sell your natural beauty formulations. We tackle topics that will make you think and encourage debate about green beauty with your friends, followers or customers. I'm your host Lorraine Dahlmeier, I'm a chartered environmentalist, biologist and the CEO of award-winning online organic cosmetic formulation school Formula Botanica. We have thousands and thousands of students in over 175 countries worldwide who study with us to become organic beauty formulators and entrepreneurs. Visit our website at formulabotanica.com to try our free online formulation course. So in today's episode I have an interview with Dr Sally Goldstone, founder of Shea-Lick skincare, a natural skincare company that puts nature at the heart of everything they do. Shea-Lick is also the first and only company in the UK to gain wildlife friendly sedification. Based in Scotland Sally works with botanical species that are native to or naturalized in the UK, growing them within a wildflower meadow. The botanicals are then distilled on traditional copper stills to produce flower waters or hydrosols which form the basis of all of her formulations. Prior to beginning Shea-Lick Sally spent 20 years working in the nature conservation sector. Her involvement in both national and international conservation projects enabled her to build a strong understanding of the complexities of the natural world as well as the issues it faces. Is this deep understanding of and connection to nature that drives her business forward. So hi Sally, welcome to the podcast. How are you doing today? I'm great, thank you and thank you very much for having me. No it's fantastic to have you here and I know we have a brilliant topic to discuss which I know is going to be highly controversial which is why I've been looking forward to it so much. So with that said I should dive straight in and my question my first question to you is can essential oils ever be sustainable? I think they can be in very specific circumstances which I'm sure will come across over the course of the podcast but in general the way we're using them at the moment I don't think they are now. Okay well that's the scene then for where we're going to head with this podcast and I'm sure there's lots of people listening now going what do you mean I love my essential oils so let's break it down and I know that you have four main points regarding the sustainability of essential oils so could you set them out at a high level first four and then we'll drill down into each of them individually. Yeah sure so there's there's four main points I mean one of the biggest problems with with the sustainability issues around essential oils is that we're just not talking about them people don't know about this very much. I'm not trying to be controversial but I do want to share this information and just make sure that people are really aware of the issues around essential oils so when they're deciding to use them they really thought it through and they thought of all the other options as well that they could potentially use. So the thought issues that I want to talk about mainly the yields of essential oils which extremely low the land use issues surrounding essential oils over harvesting and wild harvesting of the species that we used to make them and also consumption rates as well. There are four main issues to get across. Yes and those are very very big topics in their own right so I'm really pleased that you've set them out like that and yeah I'd love to dive into each of them individually so let's start with the first one you mentioned which is yield. The first of all what do you mean by yield and why is it an issue with essential oils? So yield is the conversion rate from taking a crop and then getting to the finished product. So if you think about yields when it comes to farming for human consumption for foods you imagine a cabbage crop you're growing a crop of cabbages you're going to harvest all those cabbages and humans are going to eat pretty much 100% of that crop. When it comes to essential oils a high yielding crop you're only using around 2% of the entire crop that you've harvested. So imagine a whole field of peppermint for example that's a very high yielding species you're going to use around 2% that the other 98% of that plant material that you've grown is going to end up if it's lucky on a compost heap it's difficult to compost anyway so you don't even get that kind of side product from them. A low yielding essential oil for example molissa lemon balm you're only going to be able to use less than 0.05% and so 99.5% of that crop is completely unusable. We just can't say that sustainable way of using plant matter it's just not. Yeah and following on from what you said then I mean you mentioned composting and I know you mentioned this to me previously as well so what happens then with the other 99.9% or 98% of plant matter that's left generally? As a small scale essential oil producer my waste matter will sit in a heap where I hope that one day it might decompose into a compost material as far as I'm aware larger producers do something similar or potentially it would go to landfill isn't an obvious use for it because it's this sludgy wet matter that makes it very difficult to work with. Well that obviously it makes it even harder as you say then so basically yield is the first issue that you wanted to talk about so let's then move on to number two which was land take to tell us a bit about why essential oils are an issue with respect to land take how much land do we actually use for essential oil growth? So at the moment we're using worldwide we use about 1.5 million acres of land to grow essential oils but because there's an increasing industry because more and more of us are using them and we're using them for more and more reasons so we're encouraged to use them to clean our houses for example some people are encouraging us to take them internally to apply them directly to our skin the market is increasing and over the next five years we think we're going to be using around 2.5 million acres of land to grow crops to produce essential oils that's all well and good but we only have a finite amount of land on planet earth and we're taking this land away from nature really to produce these essential oils this is going to be very controversial but when we're taking land away from nature to grow food we could say that's an essential an essential use but can we really say that essential oils are essential are they essential to life on earth and I'm not talking here about the way that our own therapists use them as qualified professionals they might be helping people medicinally but that's not how we're using them you know it's pretty much in skincare particularly as the human vanity projects and we are taking this land away from wildlife away from nature in a lot of cases to make our products smell nice is that okay I'm not sure it is and now there are all these people listening to the podcast at the moment going what are you saying about my essential oils you've just called them a human vanity project but yes I think it's it's a really important point to make you know we're using all this land is it the right way to use it that's right and there are you know we're all absolutely focused on using natural ingredients which is fantastic but we do need to think what sometimes might there be synthetic alternatives that are more sustainable and better for the environment and perhaps if we are only using them for their fragrance you know you do get these amazing nature identical compounds now that scientists have made in terms of fragrance compounds maybe we should be considering those occasionally very controversial so yeah we've covered yield we've covered land take let's now talk about the third point you made which was about over harvesting and wild harvesting obviously you said we're growing an enormous amount of crops for essential oils but where does the over harvesting and wild harvesting component come into it it's pretty well known that there are certain essential oils like sandalwood for example but have been over harvested and these are when we're not growing crops of the species but we're going into the wild taking out the plants too distilled to make the essential oils and sandalwood now is a redless species, it's redless, there's as vulnerable, so it's protected, which is fantastic. But what I've seen is a lot of products essential oils are now being sold as wild harvested. So people are going and taking these products out of natural habitats to distill. You need vast amounts of plant matter, as we've already talked about, to make essential oils. And to go into these little pockets of nature that are set aside just for conservation and people are going in and still taking from them. I just don't think it's right, I don't think wild harvested ingredients should be encouraged at all. In the UK when you think about how much land we have set aside for nature conservation, it's absolutely minimal. So wild flower medos, which is the habitat of the type work with a lot. We've lost 97% of them, just 1% of the whole of the UK is now wild flower medos. We've just got 2.5% of ancient woodland left. That's hardly anything at all, so can't we just leave these areas alone? And all that land that is set aside for growing, 70% of the UK's set aside for growing, let's use that land to produce our crops. But wild harvested ingredients, I just think they have a very lovely connotations of being very natural and people think they're getting this little bit of nature and clever marketing shows these lovely pictures of pristine ecosystems and people feel like they're getting a little bit of that with these products. But what they're actually doing is destroying these places. And I think we need to kind of change perceptions, change the way we're thinking about wild harvested ingredients. Yeah, I completely understand. And we also have, I mean, we've got 4 acres of land here and we're rewilding part of it into a wild flower medos as well, which is great. Obviously, you know, only a small part of the whole the whole piece that we that we fit into. When something else you mentioned to me previously when we were talking before recording the podcast was also about sourcing essential oils closer to where you live. I mean, could that possibly play a role in this too? Yes, absolutely. So if we're able to source our essential oils from the country of origin in terms of the botanical species. So working with native species, that's a really, really positive way to produce essential oils. So when you're working with native species, when you're growing native species, you don't have to use all the pesticides fertilizers on them. They grow so easily in their natural environment and not only that, they support so many of the local species, so particularly pollinator species. Essential oil crops are often absolutely fantastic at supporting pollinators because they're often flowering and the essential oil compounds themselves, they're called plant volatile compounds and the plants produce them to attract the pollinators in. So by working with native species on that land, you're supporting all these other species as well and then you start to have a positive feedback cycle with the native biodiversity, which is fantastic. So that is one solution to the essential oil problem, absolutely. Well, hopefully everyone listening is thinking about what native species might grow around there because there are plants that grow absolutely everywhere and there are some amazing plants out there that do create essential oils that I'm sure will inspire many of our listeners today. But we've got one more point to cover. We've covered yield, we've covered land take, we've covered over and wild harvesting and the fourth and final point that you wanted to make, I believe, was about consumption. So can you elaborate on that? This point is just around the fact that when I do talk to people about the sustainability of essential oils, people say, "Oh well, we don't use very much of them. You know, you only use them at 0.5% or 0.25% or something in formulas. We don't, we're always diluting them and carry your oils, which is absolutely great. But what we do need to think about is what happens to the stuff that we're not using. So we tend to buy essential oils when you're making batches of skincare products in larger sizes, but they don't have a very long shelf life. And if you look at the material safety data sheet for essential oils, you'll see that they're actually really hazardous. You're meant to dispose of them and hazardous waste facilities. These are things that we should just be putting down the sink. In lots of cases, they're really, really toxic. And when we think about why plants produce these compounds, it is often to try and kill off other species. You know, they're using them for communication. They're using them to protect themselves from environmental stresses, but they're also producing them to stop themselves from being eaten. So they're trying to get rid of other things. So for us to then take them, the fact that they might make us feel or lovely and relaxed or whatever it is, that's just a byproduct. You know, that's not why the plant is making them. These are hazardous toxic substances. So if you are going to use essential oils, please buy them in really small amounts and only buy what you need to have them sitting on a shelf going off is not helping anybody at all. And certainly don't be pouring them down sink when you finish with them. Yeah, I find it quite ironic, of course, that plants have developed these compounds to stop themselves from being eaten and we're putting them on asking them to smell nice. Absolutely hilarious. But another solution that exists around the kind of essential oil sustainability arguments is to actually use floral waters rather than essential oils because if I was to take an acre of land and plant it with lemon balm, I could use that to make 5.8 liters of the essential oil, which I could use to make around 11.5,000 100 millilitre bottles of skincare product. But if I use that land to grow the same crop but then distill it rather than for essential oil for floral waters, I could get 16.5 thousand liters of floral water from that and that could be used to make 14 times as many bottles of product. Even if I was using the floral water at 100 percent, if that was all the was in the products, it would still make 14 times as much product as the same crop used to make essential oil. So floral waters are a much more sustainable way to be working with plant matter. And not only are they more sustainable, they contain a much greater diversity of plant compounds as well. So within essential oils you're just getting the hydrophobic plant bottle tiles within full waters, you're getting some of those hydrophobic compounds but you're also getting the hydrophilic plant bottle tiles as well. So they are packed full of amazing plant compounds and not only that they come prediluted for us, they don't even need to worry about safety and that sort of thing. People who say, "Oh well, I'm trying to go for waterless products, that's all well and good, but don't be using essential oils in your products because the amount of water that you need to use to produce those essential oils is vast." And it's exactly the same if you're going to be producing full waters or essential oils. So please do consider floral waters in your products. Yeah. Okay, so I think obviously everyone listening now is going, "What have you done to my essential oils?" And I do understand where they're coming from because obviously, you know, people do view them as these amazing, ethereal ingredients, which is obviously also what is been the huge boom in the central oil network marketing over the last few years. I mean, how do you feel that that has tied in with the sustainability of essential oils? That people are more and more excited about using them. Yeah, I mean, they're really taking off at the moment and they are magical ethereal compounds. What's really interesting is that if we look back in history, we've known for thousands of years that plants contain these magical ethereal compounds, but historically, we never used the essential oils. The essential oils were thought of as the byproducts and we chucked them out because we thought they were pretty toxic and it was the floral waters that we distilled for and they were considered the magical compounds that plants produced. And I think it would actually be quite nice to go back to that way of working with plants and people becoming more aware of the kind of toxic nature of the essential oils and thinking maybe understanding a bit about why the plants are producing them, what they're producing them for, they're not making them to cheer us up on a bad day. These are hard working chemical compounds in the natural world. That makes perfect sense. However, just playing devil's advocate here, I know that a lot of formulas will be thinking, let's take lavender essential oils, a great example, smells absolutely heavenly and then you can get lavender hydro soles where you just sort of reel back and go, what was that? It stinks. Yes, so I mean, how do you deal with that? Thank you for mentioning that because there are so many bad quality hydro soles, floral waters on the market. And that's because there isn't such a demand for them at the moment. So they're really only being produced as a byproduct of the essential oil distilling industry. And when you're distilling for essential oils, you're distilling in a very different way for when you're distilling from floral waters, you're often ramping the temperature up, you might be distilling over a long, long time. So just get as many compounds out of the plants as possible that go into the essential oil. Because with the floral waters, you're distilling for a much greater array of compounds, you're you're distilling in a very different way, you're often using gentle or temporal And you're cutting off that distillation a little bit earlier as well. When you distill in that way for the four-water's, you're getting much, much more rounded products. The aroma is very, very different. I smell so many awful hydracellal floor water that smell burnt, they smell, oh, like just something absolutely horrible. And it's because they've been left in the stilt too long. So these hydrolysis reactions, those oxidations going on, the compounds, these volatile compounds are reacting with each other in these high temperatures, high pressure environments. And the final product is nothing like what it should be when you're distilling for floor water's. If you can find a distiller that is really passionate about floor water's, not naming any names, but their products will be so very different to those that produced as a byproduct. I remember the one of the first filming sessions we ever did for Formula Botanica, we had all this lavender hydro sol there in the studio and we opened it up and everyone sort of reeled back and went, oh, what is that? And then we had to formulate for three days in the studio in this floor for all our fragrance. It was not pretty. So I do appreciate what you're saying there. You've already mentioned a couple of solutions, but I think it would be good to wrap up and talk about what we can actually do to use essential oils sustainably. Be that as formulators as indie beauty brand owners or as consumers who are just interested in essential oils. What can we all do? If you've considered why you're using the essential oils and you've decided a synthetic alternative isn't possible, you're not happy to use that. And there aren't any other alternative products. So if you're using the essential oils, say for its anti-inflammatory properties, maybe you could think of alternative ingredients that could provide that. If you decided no, the essential oil has everything I need, I must use it. The next option would be to think, well, would the floral water have the same properties and am I able to use a water-based ingredient in the product? If the answer is no, I still really, really need to use this essential oil. I would really ask people to think carefully about paying a little bit more for their essential oils and either going to a small scale artisan producer of the essential oils because they're often growing their crops on marginal land, they're growing over much smaller scale and they often incorporate lots of biodiversity-friendly techniques in their growing. I would then, if you can't find an artisan producer locally that's maybe working with these native species we've talked about, I would then look to buying essential oils that are certified organic at the very least or wildlife-friendly at the very best. That's because I've already mentioned that essential oil crops can be a really fantastic resource for wildlife and obviously when they're found organically, they're not sprayed with fertilizers, pesticides, which means that they allow these other species to live within them. If you find a wildlife-friendly certified product, those species are not just allowed to live within their crop, they're actually encouraged to live within their crop and the grow will be doing things like maybe harvesting a little bit later in the season, which allows that wildlife to live within the crop for a little bit longer. That's the range of solutions that are out there which enable us to either work with essential oils or the plant volatile compounds or simply to add some of the reasons that we're using essential oils. There are other alternatives that will bring that kind of ump to your product. Basically. Yeah, I love it. So basically, think about why you're using it. Consider alternatives, maybe reduce your consumption slightly, but if you are going to use essential oils and many of us will continue to do so, then make sure that you source them from reputable, sustainable organic producers who use fewer pesticides, who use fewer sort of synthetic fertilizers, etc. And make sure that you think about the quality of the ingredients that you're using. Great advice. Thank you so much, Sally, and thank you for coming on the podcast. So if our listeners want to find out more about you and Shalik, your brand, how can they do so? Absolutely. So my website, www.shalik.co.uk and Shalik is spelled S-E-I-L-I-C-H. Brilliant. Well, thank you so much and your links will be with the podcast as well in the show notes. It's been a real pleasure talking to you. Thank you so much for coming on today. Thank you so much for having me. I'd love to hear what you thought of today's podcast. I know this is a controversial topic, as I know essential oils are close to a lot of people's hearts. They play an important role in the natural community and it is heartbreaking to realise how our overconsumption is impacting on their sustainability. What can we do as a community? And how do you feel about Sally's recommendations for possibly looking for alternatives and sourcing ethically and organically? I'd love to hear what you think and I'd love to hear how you feel the green beauty community can start to sustainably work with essential oils. Please do come and leave us a comment on our social channels as both the Formula Botanica team and I love hearing from you. Thank you for joining Sally and I for this latest episode of Green Beauty Conversations. I really hope you enjoyed it. Make sure you subscribe to our podcast on iTunes or Spotify and stay tuned for the next episode. Follow Formula Botanica at Formula Botanica on Facebook. Instagram Club has Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest or LinkedIn. We are everywhere. Visit our website at formulabotanica.com and sign up for our free online formulation course today.