Shea Butter, The Environment and Saskatchewan Ingenuity

 Russia's genocidal war on Ukraine is now in its second year. The media is full of stories about the war and I am sure you can find them if you wish. So this post is about some good news for a change, turning a miniature environmental problem into a win-win situation.

Shea Butter is a rich emollient produced from the nuts of the Shea or Karité trees that grow all across the African Sahel. The top shea nut–producing countries are Nigeria, Mali, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire, Benin and Togo. Shea Butter has been called “women’s gold” because it provides employment and income directly and indirectly to some three million women across the continent. Shea butter exports from West Africa garner between $90 million and $200 million a year.

Using traditional methods, women, often organized in cooperatives, harvest Shea fruit. They then crush the nuts inside to extract the precious butter, which is boiled, cleaned, and sold as raw or unrefined, at the local markets or exported. They may also sell unprocessed nuts to large commercial companies which use expellers and solvents to produce a refined product which is colorless and odorless, and lacks the natural skin regenerating benefits of unrefined Shea Butter.

Shea Butter production is roughly 1/3 unrefined, 2/3 refined, with 65% going into food and beverage (chocolate and confectionary eg Kit Kat and Milky Way), and 30% into cosmetics and skin care. Ghana is the largest exporter of unrefined shea butter. The most effective body creams and lotions will contain at least 20% of Unrefined Shea Butter in their formulas.

My friend of many years, Wayne Dunn, a farm boy from Big River, Saskatchewan, married a woman from Wa in Northern Ghana, whom he met in Ottawa. In 2011, during a visit to Northern Ghana, one of the women leaders said to Wayne, “Can you help us earn income?” Those words launched Baraka Impact which began buying unrefined Shea Butter from village women and exporting it to Canada for resale. Demand steadily grew, largely due to the story of the hardworking women who made Shea Butter and the dignity of income it gave them. You can read about the company, the products and the people at the above link.

After Shea Nuts are roasted, pounded, then boiled, the solution is manually whipped to coagulate the shea butter. This leaves behind a solution which is 60% solids. Normally this is just dumped on the ground, creating a huge mess, though it eventually dries. In the meantime, the women are buying firewood usually from chopped down Shea Trees to roast and boil the shea nuts.

So this year, Wayne, the farmer, logger and fisherman that he was, thought there has to be a better way. With lots of input from the local women making the Shea Butter, he and they came up with a process to turn the waste product into fuel. The women love it as it burns hotter and cleaner than wood. It saves trees. It cleans up a mess. It requires no fancy equipment.

The wastewater is dumped into a settling pond where it dries out. The solid waste is dug out of the settling pond, transported by wheelbarrow to a level piece of ground and formed into bricks or balls which then dry in the sun. It isn’t perfect, is labour intensive, and requires a rethink for the rainy season. But it is an environmental blessing.

I will post some pictures and videos here to illustrate but for the real professional explanation see the Baraka Impact blog post here:

WASTE TO ENERGY: CIRCULAR ECONOMY FUELS SHEA BUTTER PROCESSING

Roasting shea nuts

the residue bricks burn hot and clean

Wayne always sends me pictures of cows, which are in the background of this video.

Our family use Baraka African black soap which is a mild version of Grandma's lye soap. We love it as it not only gets us clean, if you rub it on really grimy areas like greasy collars before washing, they come out spotless. We also use Kombo Butter rubbed on sore muscles and aching backs or knees which brings long lasting relief. It is now available as a premixed cream in a fancy jar.