As a manufacturing company, Kneipp has a responsibility for biodiversity. We want to make our contribution to preserving habitats and counteracting the loss of species. The more sustainable use of resources plays an important role in this - for example, by using more and more organic ingredients for our products or increasingly avoiding the use of fresh wood fibers in our outer packaging. At the same time, we are also working to keep the environmental impact of our products as low as possible after use, whether through the use of biodegradable ingredients or recyclable packaging.
Our planet in the red zone:
Why we need the most sustainable use of resources possible
If your bank account was slipping into the red, would you go shopping first? Probably not. At the same time, we humans have been overdrawing our "account" with the Earth since the 1970s. Every year, starting on Earth Overshoot Day, we consume more natural resources than our planet can renew within 12 months. This day has moved steadily forward in recent decades. Globally, we will have already used up our resources for the year in August 2024, and in Germany we are already living "on credit" from the beginning of May.
This constant overuse has dramatic consequences for ecosystems. For example, global biodiversity has been declining enormously since 1970: on average, almost 70 percent of the population of all observed vertebrate species has already been lost¹. With this development, humanity is increasingly sawing at its own branch. It is therefore time for us to take better care of our common habitat.
Because so much depends on diversity:
Conserving resources means protecting species
Organic calendula extract is used in the Kneipp skin protection ointment
A raw material that causes controversy:
How Kneipp handles the issue of palm oil
The term palm oil rings alarm bells for many people. After all, the gigantic demand for this raw material is leading to an ever-increasing expansion of palm oil plantations, for which hectares upon hectares of rainforest - the backbone of biodiversity - are being destroyed worldwide. How do we as cosmetics manufacturers deal with this? This much in advance: as a matter of principle, we do not use palm oil or palm kernel oil as such in our products. However, additives such as surfactants or emulsifiers are required for our formulations. We can't do without them. We use palm oil derivatives for this purpose, i.e. substances that are obtained from palm oil or palm kernel oil. And we do this very consciously.
Palm oil and palm kernel oil are obtained from the fruit of the oil palm. It is particularly high-yielding and requires the least acreage in relation to the amount of oil obtained.
Can palm oil be a sustainable resource?
You're probably wondering why we use derivatives made from palm oil when we actually want to conserve resources. The answer: because the oil palm produces very high yields. If we were to rely exclusively on other oil plants instead, the amount of land needed for the required quantities of vegetable oil would be significantly higher - with all the negative consequences for the ecological balance and biodiversity². The question is therefore not so much "palm oil yes or no?"; it is much more a question of growing it as sustainably as possible. This is why Kneipp is a member of both the global RSPO (Round Table on Sustainable Palm Oil) network and the German FONAP (Forum Nachhaltiges Palmöl) initiative, with the aim of promoting more sustainable palm oil supply chains and increasing the widespread availability of sustainably grown palm oil.
Organic at Kneipp:
More organic ingredients for intact ecosystems
How we humans cultivate our raw materials is one of the central questions surrounding the preservation of natural habitats - both in the Brazilian rainforest and in our immediate neighborhoods here in Germany and Europe. Organic farming ensures better soil health with a higher humus content and a higher number of soil microorganisms and soil animals such as earthworms. It protects the groundwater and promotes biodiversity, in particular by avoiding the use of synthetic chemical pesticides. Two to three times more arable weed species occur in organically farmed fields than on conventionally farmed land. In addition, there are around 40 percent more ground beetles, short-winged beetles and spiders, twice as many butterfly species and up to eight times higher population densities of birds³.
Only in this balance can the biocoenosis of plants, animals and humans function, and only in this way can we maintain intact ecosystems. This is why we are gradually increasing the proportion of certified organic "ingredients" in our products.
Conserving resources, preserving biodiversity:
Plant-based ingredients play the main role in our products. And we are also increasingly using renewable raw materials in our packaging. Wood is one such renewable raw material. But trees are real climate protectors. They absorb CO₂ and store it for centuries in their trunk, bark and leaves. Once a forest has been cut down, it takes a long, long time for it to grow back. That is why we are working to avoid using fresh wood fibers in our outer packaging wherever possible. Instead, we use recycled cardboard or, as with our lip care, a combination with cardboard made from fast-growing plants - grass, for example.
Weed? Three facts!
- First the obvious: grass is a renewable resource - and one that grows back particularly quickly. What annoys the allotment gardener is a great advantage for us.
- The grass for our grass paper comes from compensation areas in Germany. Thanks to the short transportation routes, we avoid unnecessary quantities of harmful greenhouse gases.
- Grass is available almost everywhere and in large quantities. In addition, less water per tonne is required for the production of grass paper than for conventional paper made from sulphate-containing pulp.
Sebastian Kneipp already counted the bright yellow arnica plant among his favorites. To this day, Kneipp has a wide range of arnica products in his program. However, arnica is coming under increasing pressure due to climate change, agricultural monocultures and intensive grazing.
To counteract this, Kneipp relies, for example, on sustainable wild collection with clear guidelines for harvesting.
The arnica is picked by hand just below the blossom and not - as is so often the case - pulled out of the ground as a complete plant. In addition, enough ripe flowers are left for bees and other insects. After all, the arnica should still be around next summer.
The shea nut, or more precisely: the shea butter extracted from it, is a multi-talent in skin care. The natural product can reduce inflammation, relieve pain and is traditionally used to treat scars or burns. In the West African savannah, where there are large natural deposits of shea nut trees, the shea nut is an important source of livelihood for the population.
Our shea nuts are sourced from AAK, one of the world's leading suppliers of sustainably sourced natural ingredients and founder of Kolo Nafaso, the largest direct sourcing program in West Africa. Launched in 2009, the Kolo Nafaso program employs hundreds of thousands of women shea collectors in four countries. Traditionally, it is women who collect the shea fruits and sell the kernels. They rely on this work to supplement their income and provide for their families.
In addition to building long-term, fair and transparent trading partnerships, the program offers pre-financing when women's resources are scarce in the spring and runs training projects to improve entrepreneurial skills and thus promote economic development, health and safety.
As the shea nut trees are not grown on plantations but are allowed to grow wild in sub-Saharan Africa, they make an invaluable contribution to preserving regional ecosystems and combating climate change.
Biodegradability:
Water protection is nature conservation in its purest form
When we talk about the protection of natural resources, one resource in particular comes to the fore: water. This is especially true for a company like Kneipp, whose history began with the power of this elixir of life. But how can we help to rebalance the natural cycles of this "raw material of raw materials"? The fact is: Not only in the world's oceans, but also in our wastewater, far too much ends up that doesn't belong there. One example is substances that cannot be broken down by the water's own "cleaning powers" - i.e. by microorganisms - or can only be broken down with great difficulty. If too many foreign substances remain in the water, they pose a long-term threat to our ecosystems - and thus automatically to biodiversity. To prevent this from happening in the first place, we use biodegradable ingredients in our bath additives, showers and soaps: 98% for shower products and hand soaps and at least 97% for foam and cream baths (according to OECD or equivalent methods).
Everything good comes from above - and has to come down again.
The Kneipp meadow orchard with trees of old fruit varieties is a habitat for insects.
How we preserve groundwater
It's no secret that we are pleased about the increasing demand for Kneipp products. The flip side of the coin is that when a company produces more, it usually needs more space to do so. Is it possible to reconcile this with resource conservation and sustainability? We are asking ourselves this question as part of the expansion of our main site in Ochsenfurt-Hohestadt. Once the construction project is complete, rainwater will be able to seep back into the ground with the help of sophisticated drainage systems - either via green troughs or by irrigating the company's own orchard. In other words, we are committed to preserving the natural water cycle.
Preserving biodiversity - also a task in our region
... and one that we in our Lower Franconian homeland have dedicated ourselves to for many years at various levels: from our own orchards to the protection of native bird species.
Sources:
¹ Global Footprint Network: Earth Overshoot Day, retrieved on 22.04.2024; WWF: Species crisis comes to a head, retrieved on 22.04.2024
² WWF: No palm oil is not a solution either, retrieved on 22.04.2024
NABU: Advantages of organic farming, retrieved on 22.04.2024