Environmental Sustainability

Shea trees grow naturally in west and central Africa.  These trees are wild and uncultivated and are not treated with pesticides, herbicides, or fertilizers.  Shea trees receive water from rainfall and are not irrigated.  Shea trees produce shea nuts abundantly without the need for fertilizers.  Because of these natural characteristics, shea trees are among the worlds most sustainable resources.  

Attempts to cultivate shea trees in shea tree plantations have been unsuccessful.  The primary reason for these failures is the difficulty in germination of shea trees.  Also it takes about 25 years for a shea tree to grow to maturity and produce a large quantity of shea nuts.  For these reasons shea nuts continue to be harvested from wild trees.  As raw shea butter also continues to be handcrafted, shea butter remains a sustainable wild crafted product.

Economic Sustainability

Deman for shea butter continues to increase as people around the world become aware of the powerful skin care benefits of shea butter.  This product is sustainable because it continues to be harvested and produced by hand.  

Shea butter is produced in the small rural villages of west and centarlShea trees grow naturally in West and Central Africa and virtually anyone in the village can gather shea nuts since this requires no equipment or tools.  Collection of shea nuts is a simple task, however it is not an easy task.  In order to collect shea nuts it is necessary to walk for miles searching for them on the ground among shea trees.  The gathering of nuts requires a lot of bending and the gatherers usually transport the nuts themselves by balancing bales that can weigh up to 100 lbs on their heads.  After the nuts are gathered and taken to the village they must be dried and cracked to prepare them for the boiling process.  Gathering shea nuts and producing shea butter is a very labor intensive process, hence the importance of fair trade practices to compensate workers for the work involved in producing raw shea butter.

Shea butter can be extracted via chemicals (Hexane) which produces a larger quantity of oil from the nuts.  However, hexane extraction creates environmental and economic sustainability issues.  Hexane extraction not only reduces the quality of shea butter, it also creates the possibility of over production and exploitation from reduced prices paid for bulk shea nuts.  A large quantity of shea nuts is required for a shea nut  dealer to make money because bulk shea nuts are sold for a low price.  In this scenario the workers (usually women) are not paid a fair price.  However, if shea butter is sold instead of unprocessed shea nuts, the price paid by the shea butter dealer to the workers is higher.  But worker exploitation can still occur if an unfair price is paid for raw shea butter.

With the incorporation of Fair Trade practices, prices paid to workers in the villages producing shea butter reflects a higher percentage of the price of the end product which promotes fairness in the trading arrangement between dealers and the workers that produce shea butter.  This leads to an increase in the standard of living in these rural villages and allows all that participate in the production of shea butter to benefit economically from this natural resource. 

All Shea Butter used in esan products is obtained from Fair Trade shea butter suppliers. 

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