Ingredient

Organic Extra Virgin Coconut Oil

Cocos nucifera

Featured in our products for its plethora of benefits for skin and hair, this particular organic and extra virgin coconut oil is mainly used to create the foaming base of our soaps.

Produced by the āluān collective, Indonesia

Since 2017, Lush has purchased certified organic oil directly from āluān, a collective of organisations in the Aceh region of Indonesia, more precisely, the Bangkaru and Simeulue islands. They work with 500 smallholder farming families on 2600 hectares of land. 

Alongside producing the highest quality coconut oil, they aim to keep the islands wild through a sustainability approach where business, people and nature thrive side by side. The āluān collective comprises a foundation that is dedicated to conserving and restoring ecosystems and endangered species (such as reefs and green turtles). With support from Lush, they also started a pilot project to grow and plant new coconut trees to replace ageing crops and ensure successful continuation.

What is the benefit of coconut oil in soaps?

Historically, soap is a foaming and cleansing paste created by mixing a fatty substance with caustic soda. These fats can be animal tallow (not at Lush, though) or vegetable oils (that sounds more like us). Coconut oil is especially good at creating a gentle soap for the skin with a dense and creamy lather. It’s a great alternative to palm oil.

They see me foaming

At Lush, we call the foaming paste described above as a ‘soap base’ instead of just ‘soap’, because we add many key ingredients to it (like humectants or essential oils). We aim to make the most complete, effective, gentle and fragrant soaps.

In modern soap making, palm oil is often used to create soap bases as it’s easily transformed. Given the environmental impact of palm oil’s overproduction, Lush switched to an (externally made) base of coconut and rapeseed oil in 2009. Six years later, eager to vary effects and textures and choose the most qualitative and ethical oil sources, Lush inventors have developed their own soap bases, made in-house. Aluān's coconut oil is found in many of these bases, and has even helped us phase out palm-derived sodium lauryl sulfate, another foaming agent, from almost all of our soaps.