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OIL UP These use cooperative- Aveda’s Green Science skin Kiehl’s Superbly Restorative Macadamia Natural Oil hair line Josie Maran Cosmetics uses it |
It’s not every day you can say you’re helping someone in a developing country by simply styling your hair. But thanks to an oil making its way here from Morocco, you can do some good just by picking up a new cleanser, hair mask or even mascara.
Even though argan oil is only now making its mark in magazines and with celebrities, the Moroccan commodity has quite a history.
“The indigenous Berbers of Morocco have used argan oil for centuries for its nutritive, medicinal and cosmetic properties,” says Jennie Conlee, education coordinator for Planet Beauty, headquartered in Costa Mesa. Describing one of the ways the oil can be extracted, she says, “They discovered the oil by first finding the nuts of the fruit produced by the argan tree. Goats climb the tree and eat the fruit it produces. They naturally discard the nut and the Berber found that these nuts contained a kernel that oil could be extracted out of.”
Following extensive research on the benefits of argan oil and the economic stability it could create for local women, Moroccan chemistry Professor Zoubida Charrouf and The International Development Research Centre organized cooperatives of Berber women in the late 1990s with the mission of streamlining the harvesting of argan oil while allowing local women to gain income through its sale. Even though the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization declared the Moroccan argan forest area a biosphere reserve in 1998 – meaning it could be developed sustainably – more than a third of the argan forest had already disappeared, says Charrouf. Fortunately, the cooperatives’ mission includes reforestation.
According to Charrouf, there are now 140 coops organized in six federations as well as many large companies involved – posing some serious competition to the cooperatives.
Cooperative workers extract the argan oil from the kernels contained in very hard pits of the argan tree fruit as well as from the rest of the fruit, Charrouf says. Other parts of the argan tree, like argan leaf extract, can be found in cosmetic products, as well.
Argan oil sales through the cooperatives benefit the local Berber women as a whole since the cooperatives share profits among them – providing healthcare and education to the local women, says Conlee.
The oil is rich in the antioxidant vitamin E and in essential fatty acids, which Conlee says help make argan oil a great treatment for damaged, dehydrated and devitalized hair.
“The skin’s moisture barrier is improved, and the skin is left with a smooth, more resilient quality,” says Rae Pia, store manager at Kiehl’s Since 1851 in South Coast Plaza.
