Common products & ingredients from tropical forests (that you might not expect!)

As many people are becoming more aware of our impact on the planet, in this blog we are going to look into how fortunate we are to be able to get lots of natural products & ingredients from tropical rainforests, and how we can do that sustainably.

Most people know the common products & ingredients that you can get from forests, including chocolate, medicines, nuts, bananas, avocados and coffee. As well as the usual products you expect to find in tropical forests, there are some that you might know about including:

• Golf balls – These may not be easy to find these days, but in the 1990’s, golf balls used to be made from the sap of the balata plant, native to Amazon rainforests!

• Anti-cancer medication – As well as sustainable resourcing of medicines, over 70% of plant with anti-cancer properties exist only in the Amazon. One of them used currently to alleviate pain from chemotherapy and fight infections is called Lapacho.
• Shampoo & Moisturiser – Next time you lather on your shampoo or moisturiser, you can thank the Amazon for your looks! Most citrus fruits and oils can be found in lots of Amazonian plants.
• Rubber – Plants native to South America provide latex, used in everything from tyres to surgical gloves.
• Original Coca-Cola – Nowadays, the famous fizzy drink contains lots of artificial alternatives, but one of the primary ingredients used to be the Cola nut, which gave Coca-Cola its caffeine kick (and its name)!

We are very lucky to have access to the products and ingredients above to utilise in our day to day lives. This being said, in order to protect the forests and products for future generations, we need to continue to harvest these products or ingredients sustainably. Some ways of ensuring this are by afforestation, shifting cultivation, rubber tapping, selective logging and choosing agroforestry over deforestation. These combined methods will ensure we are not removing tropical forest unnecessarily, replacing trees that we are removing, and finding more sustainable methods to harvest products without destroying the whole plant. It is important to embrace the use of natural products alongside planted areas to benefit both the human population and the natural world.

As a population, we have steadily become more aware of sustainable pocesses, and one of the main changes has occurred in coffee production. Coffee plantations can be a big concern for forests if not managed properly. The main way that most coffee plantations would be grown is to deforest the area of the natural trees and plant the coffee plants. Nowadays, people have realised that coffee can be shade-grown and hence plants can be planted underneath the natural canopy to allow the rainforest forest to remain standing. Such a simple but effective solution to ensure we can all get our caffeine fix sustainably!

How can you help?

When purchasing your own ingredients or products from supermarkets, it’s really easy to check you are contributing to sustainable sourcing. Some simple things to look for are logos, including the rainforest alliance logo on products like coffee or cocoa, the MSC logo on any fish products (frozen or fresh), the fairtrade logo on fruits/vegetables or red tractor for meats. Keeping an eye out for these logos is the best way to ensure you are helping source sustainable products.