Making vetiver fair for all

Making vetiver fair for all

Good for your mental health, good for local farmers: supporting a cooperative and improving sanitation in Haiti for the vetiver we use in our new anti-stress fragrance supplement FOREST LUNGS.

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We prefer to take a precautionary approach when it comes to ingredients that may be questionable for our physical or environmental health. For us, that means a long list of ingredients we won’t use in our topical, ingestible and sensory formulas. 

FOREST LUNGS uses responsibly sourced ingredients through the global fragrance house we developed the anti-stress supplement with, Givaudan. Their non-profit organisation the Givaudan Foundation is committed to supporting the local producers and communities at the source of the natural raw materials and helping to strengthen the social, environmental and economic fabric of the growers’ lives. In the past ten years, Givaudan has positively impacted thousands of producers and their families in the areas of agriculture and production practices, education, health and nutrition. The ingredients in FOREST LUNGS that correlate with their varying Communities at Source initiatives include Benzoin and Patchouli alongside Vetiver.

Vetiver is highly prized in the fragrance industry; a scented, golden oil with an elegant, intense and smoky aroma. Givaudan supports a cooperative of vetiver growers and their families in Haiti, working to safeguard the supply of the ingredient and to support producer communities through its locally-minded approach. Since 2012, they have been collaborating with a local supplier to support a cooperative of 250 vetiver root producers from three villages. The cooperative and our local supplier have achieved the Ecocert Fair for Life Certification, which ensures minimum prices, improved working conditions for everybody in the supply chain in Haiti, and validates the social and environmental responsibility of vetiver production. The certification also ensures full traceability of the raw material.

Farmers across three villages in the region of Les Cayes, South Haiti have formed a cooperative for the cultivation of vetiver roots. More than 290 farmers benefit from price premiums and technical support through the cooperative, which also has a development fund for community projects that has included the repair of the road that serves the three villages and the electrification of the villages.

The Givaudan Foundation has supported the cooperative members and their families since 2014, covering the cooperative office rent and encouraging organisational improvements with the hiring of a manager. More recently, a project was initiated by a group of women and conducted with the support of the cooperative manager and funding from the Givaudan Foundation. It aims to improve access to drinking water and sanitation facilities for inhabitants of the area as most of them do not have access to water at home. The newly-built sanitation and hygiene facility with showers, toilets and a washing area for clothes was inaugurated in May 2018. This initiative aligns with our partnership with charity: water, where 1% of all our online revenue goes towards their work to bring clean water and improve sanitation in developing countries. 


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