The Story Behind Our Shea Butter: Why Fair Trade Shea Butter Matters

We love our Hemp & Oat Soaps. You may know them for their creamy lather and that nourishing, skin-loving feel, and we have to give some credit to one of our favourite ingredients: fair-trade shea butter from my father's homeland, Ghana.

We use shea butter as part of our superfatting process, meaning we mix it in after the soap has cooked. This allows us to intentionally leave the nourishing effect of shea butter in the finished soap, rather than having it converted as part of the soap-making process.

Shea butter is a beautiful, natural ingredient. Rich, creamy and moisturizing, it has been used in Ghana and across West Africa for generations in skincare, cooking (yes, cooking!!) and traditional practices. But there’s a side of shea butter that you may not have heard about: the story behind who produces it, and how that ingredient makes its way into the products we buy.

Shea Butter Has a Long History in Ghana

Shea trees (Vitellaria paradoxa) grow naturally throughout Ghana’s savannah regions, particularly in the north. For generations, Ghanaian's- women, in particular- have played a central role in gathering shea fruits, processing the nuts and producing shea butter.

Traditional shea production is incredibly labour-intensive. The nuts are dried, crushed, roasted, ground and kneaded before the butter is extracted, a process that can take days and requires significant physical work. (UNDP)

Today, shea is an important source of income for women and families across northern Ghana. The ingredient has also become a valuable global commodity, used in everything from skincare and cosmetics to food products (UNDP)

So, Why Does Fair Trade Matter?

The global demand for shea butter has created opportunities for Ghanaian producers, but women working throughout the shea value chain can still face challenges with access to markets, resources, equipment and fair compensation. The supply chain can involve multiple steps between the women gathering and processing shea and the companies ultimately selling products made with it. (PubMed Central (PMC))

Fair-trade initiatives are one way of addressing some of these challenges. In Ghana, women-led shea organizations have pursued fair-trade certification to access international markets and improve the economic value they receive from their work. One UNDP-supported project, for example, helped a women-led Ghanaian enterprise obtain fair-trade certification and connect with international buyers. (UNDP)

And this matters because behind an ingredient as simple as shea butter are people, communities, generations of knowledge and a whole supply chain.

Why We Chose Fair-Trade Shea Butter

As a founder and being Ghanaian myself, sourcing our shea butter from Ghana is really important for me.

At Serotonin, we don’t just want to think about what makes an ingredient beautiful for our skin, we want to think about the people and places behind it, too.

Choosing fair-trade shea butter is one small way that I can be more intentional about the ingredients I bring into our products and the supply chains we support with every purchase.

So the next time you reach for a shea butter product, take a moment to look beyond the ingredient list. Where did the shea come from? Who produced it? And how were they compensated for their work?

The beauty about self-care is that it can make us feel good, and simultaneously make us think a little deeper about the world around us.

From Ghana to Toronto, this is a little bit of the story behind our Hemp & Oat Soaps.