Why Our Skincare Products Don't Contain Palm Oil

What is Palm Oil?

Palm Oil is the most widely-used vegetable oil on Earth. Chances are you've probably used them in your food, cosmetics, haircare or skincare products over the years.

For skincare benefits, Palm Oil is said to restore hydration to dry skin and seal in moisture.

So why don't we use it in our products?

Palm trees are very efficient and can have more oil produced per acre than other oils, such as soy or coconut.

To produce Palm Oil in sufficient quantities and to meet the surging demand, farmers in Southeast Asia have cleared large areas of tropical forest to create room for large palm tree plantations.

The warm, humid climate of the tropics offers perfect growth conditions for oil palms.

By clearing these large areas and making room for more Palm trees, it has led to deforestation in countries like Indonesia, Borneo and Malaysia.

In recent years, the orangutan population in Indonesia, which depends on tropical forests, has decreased by 50%. 

At Dermatec Skincare, we want to make sure we do everything as ethically as possible and only include the best ingredients.

All of our ingredients are chosen for their benefits not just for the skin, but also the Earth. To help decrease the demand of Palm Oil and to reduce deforestation it is best to avoid it completely and support brands/companies that do the same like Dermatec Skincare.

It can be tricky to identify whether or not a product contains Palm Oil, so we've listed some of the alternate names below so you can check your skincare, haircare, cosmetic and food product labels. 

• If it contains the word ‘palm’, such as  palm fruit oil, palmate, palm kernel glyceryl, stearate, palmitic acid, Palm stearine, palmitoyl oxostearamide, palmitoyl tetrapeptide-3
• Popular surfactants including sodium Laureth and lauryl sulfate and lauryl lactylate/sulfate are derivates of palm.
• The following are all palm oil derived emulsifiers that are often used in organic skincare: Cetearyl olivate, sorbitan olivate, sorbitan stearate, Cetearyl glucoside, glyceryl stearate, and glyceryl oleate

We hope we've shed some light on why Palm Oil is not an ingredient we support and why we choose to leave it out of our products.

We know there are plenty of other Earth-friendly ingredients out there, and we choose to include those in our skincare products.

Sources:

https://www.wwf.org.uk/updates/8-things-know-about-palm-oil

https://www.rainforest-rescue.org/topics/palm-oil#start