The corporate was established with a mission to cease deforestation by growing a marketplace for precious merchandise from the rainforest, thereby empowering native individuals to guard the remaining forests and the wildlife it shelters.
“We have a look at how we are able to additional improve the worth of the rainforest and look contained in the forest the place we’re working and discover probably the most precious merchandise,” stated founder and CEO of Forestwise, Dirk-Jan Oudshoorn.
One of many firm’s star merchandise is its distinctive illipe butter. Illipe butter is produced from the nuts of the endangered Shorea stenoptera tree, which solely grows within the forests of Borneo.
Historically, it has been utilized by locals as an historical treatment for repairing chronically dry or cracked pores and skin, or to heal sores and sunburns.
What makes illipe butter completely different is that it has the next melting level than shea butter, however melts when it comes into contact with pores and skin.
This attribute makes it splendid to be used in lipsticks and face masks, in addition to strong formulations of shampoo, lotions, and cleaning soap.
With demand for sustainability, traceability and clear formulations on the rise, Oudshoorn believes magnificence producers and customers will respect the ingredient.
Nonetheless, he laments that there’s nonetheless a misunderstanding surrounding the ingredient in regard to its provide.
“When you lookup illipe butter, you’ll discover that there’s just one harvest each two to a few years. Some larger corporations could also be hesitant as a result of they don’t seem to be certain about safety of provide. We at all times top off for 3 years so we are able to bridge the hole between harvests.”
Bringing multinationals on board is crucial for the corporate, which is struggling to assist as many rainforest communities as it will like.
“We’re solely processing about 2% of the illipe nuts within the space. About 75% solely come from six villages and there are a whole bunch. Some villages have 500 to 2,000 tonnes of illipe nuts. Each season, we can not take all that inventory as a result of nobody else is shopping for these nuts in the intervening time,” stated Oudshoorn
“We wish barely larger clients, multinationals maybe, so we may help different communities.”
The corporate and the native communities are additionally dealing with different uncontrollable challenges similar to local weather change.
“There’s simply much more rain. There’s probably not been any dry seasons for the final two to a few years, so we’ve got numerous floods. That’s impacting everybody within the within the villages and the town as properly. The truth is, what this reveals is that we’ve got to convey the forests again to stabilise the local weather,” stated Oudshoorn.
Regardless of this, Forestwise has a steady provide of illipe butter, he emphasised.
From cosmetics to chocolate
Along with cosmetics, Forestwise can also be increasing into the meals sector. This can be a pure enlargement for it as illipe butter is equal to cocoa butter and can be utilized to make chocolate as properly.
The corporate additionally has natural coconut sugar, which will be utilized in meals and cosmetics, stated Oudshoorn.
“Within the rainforest, there’s tremendous excessive manufacturing. You will get about two kilos of sugar day-after-day from one tree all yr spherical. It is actually good addition to the portfolio of rainforest merchandise as a result of for the individuals who dwell close to that forest, this might be their foremost earnings supply. In the event that they make sugar, they will double their month-to-month earnings if they’ve solely three timber of their space.”