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We all love to pamper and care for our skin. Well, now there’s
a new range of wonderful spa-inspired products from The Body
Shop with an ingredient that not only that helps your skin feel
great, it’s fabulous for your soul too.

For its sensational new Spa Wisdom range, The Body Shop has travelled to deepest Brazil to find an organic tropical nut oil which is not only a superbly light moisturiser, but is the main breadwinner for a whole community.

Monoi Miracle Oil and On a High Hydrating Puree, both of which use organic Brazilian babassu oil extracted from the nuts of the wild-growing babassu palm tree, are two of nine amazing new products of the Spa Wisdom range, launching in March 2005.

The women of the COPPALJ* - which has around 150 members across 8 communities in Lago do Junco, North East Brazil - have supplied The Body Shop with babassu oil since 1995, providing the magic ingredient for over 30 of its products, including its best-selling White Musk range.

The Body Shop trades with COPPALJ through Community Trade, its special purchasing programme. Trading with 36 suppliers in 23 countries, The Body Shop spends over £5 million a year sourcing Community Trade natural ingredients and accessories across the world. The programme works to support suppliers through fair prices and to help them invest in the growth of their business.

Trade with The Body Shop is helping to provide a sustainable income for the rural communities of Lago do Junco. COPPALJ has been able to invest in its community and its business, and now has the potential for even greater international expansion.

But life hasn’t always been so positive for the people of Lago do Junco. In the 1960s’ the Brazilian government took the land on which babassu trees grew from the people to sell to cattle ranchers. No longer allowed to collect the nuts or live on the land, families lost their homes and their livelihoods, and trees were destroyed across the state to make way for cattle farming. By the mid-1980s’, communities had been torn apart, with many people leaving the region in desperation.

Tireless campaigning led to eventual success for the campaigners as the government acknowledged their cause and passed a law called “Free Babassu”, giving the communities freedom to return to the land and harvest the nuts.

It’s thanks, in considerable part, to the efforts of the women nut-breakers, who campaigned for years for the right of their communities to collect nuts from the land, and protect the destruction of any more babassu trees, that the babassu nut oil industry is back in business. And trade with The Body Shop has meant that the women can command a living wage.

Says Dora, a nut-breaker: “We used to have to accept an unfair price for our babassu. Being paid a fair price has put food on our table and proper clothing on our backs, and our standard of living has totally changed.”

Spa Wisdom contains five other Community Trade ingredients across the range including Shea Butter and Cocoa Butter from Ghana, Honey and Beeswax from Zambia; and Sesame Oil from Nicaragua.

Melanie Taylor, the UK Product Director for The Body Shop says: “Spa Wisdom combines great products with an ethical conscience. It features high-quality natural ingredients, providing excellent benefits for both our customers and the communities we trade with.

Babassu oil:
From beginning to end product

Community Trade: Why The Body Shop is committed to trading fairly:
Small-scale producers in poor and developing countries are often at the mercy of falling commodity prices. International market forces and conventional trading practices mean that often they cannot get a fair price for their goods. For many, this means living a hand-tomouth existence.

The Body Shop believes that businesses have a responsibility to use trade not just to make money, but to have a positive influence in the world. As a global business, we source from local communities, often in remote areas, who wouldn’t normally have the chance to trade directly with companies like The Body Shop. Additionally, The Body Shop is committed to creating access to new markets for our Community Trade
producers who would otherwise not be equipped to sell into these
markets themselves. It is our commitment to trading with a conscience.

Community Trade: A winning formula
The Body Shop has a long and proud heritage of buying natural ingredients, accessories and gifts from socially or economically marginalised communities across the world. For 36 projects across 23 countries the fair price we pay enables communities to invest in their future as well cover their wage and production costs. In the past year alone we have spent over £5 million on natural ingredients and accessories through the Community Trade programme.

Everybody benefits! Customers get high quality products and the opportunity to demonstrate their ethical purchasing power; a community benefits from fair trade; and The Body Shop continues its commitment to offering fantastic products in a socially responsible way.


Three days a week, the women gather the nuts from the forest floor and carry them back to their homes. The nuts are piled on porches and patios where the women will sit and spend the rest of the week breaking them open.	Once broken, the nuts are delivered to one of the Co-operative’s eight shops. A truck collects all the nuts once a week and delivers them to the pressing facility in Lago do Junco, where the oil is extracted by the Co-op’s mechanised press.

Absolutely nothing is wasted – in fact it’s estimated that at least 68 products can be extracted. For example, the husks make organic charcoal which is used to heat the nuts, sold to shops, or used for animal feed or for fuel in the workers’ homes. The burnt charcoal is then used as fertiliser.	Once the oil is processed, other by-products of the process – such as borra, used to make soap – are sold, alongside other community produce, under the ‘Babassu Livre’ brand name. No preservatives are used in the process. The oil is totally organic.

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