Good News About Olives & Wildlife!

Wonderful News! Do you remember a few years ago I removed olive oil from my products because of the news that night harvesting was harming a colossal amount of wildlife, mainly nesting and roosting birds?

In March 2020 the nocturnal harvesting of olives in olive groves was banned throughout the Spanish and Portuguese fields. This has been a massive success for the conservation and sustainable food movements.

I will now be able to incorporate olive oil back into your favourite soaps. I'm very concious of where and how ingredients I use are farmed. It's always a little bit tricky but it's important to follow through with the ethical integrity I pride Little Blue Hen Savonnerie on.

Thank you for reading.

Your chief savonnière ~ Michelle

Partial Archived Blog when I first took action, some of the content was removed because it was no longer relevant.

There looks like there is some good news, there is the Olive Alive Project which is acting on conserving and bringing biodiversity back to olive farming and they have a logo for olive oil products that have been farmed in line with their regulations and contributing to the goals of this amazing project highlighted by the wild bird conservation group SEO Birdlife.

UPDATE

I have been in contact with Olivares Vivos and they are incredibly helpful. They have given me a list of suppliers that are practicing the protection of biodiversity and ethical olive farming along side their organisation. Olive groves play a big role in supporting wildlife. I also have this statement from Olivares Vivos:

"The vast majority of the Spanish, Portuguese or Italian production of olive oil is produced in traditional plantations which are managed by small farmers. Less than 4% of the Iberian olive groves have super intensive morphology, and only a proportion of this 4% is harvested at night."

So in light of the news about night harvesting, this is good news from the Iberian olive farming regions. However, we still need to press for a change to this 4% night harvesting to be banned. I am currently talking to some Olivares Vivos olive oil suppliers to see if I can reintegrate olive oil back into my products.