Sandalwood oil without sandalwood trees

Abstract

The warm and fuzzy push by consumers for biobased ingredients has a dark side: natural doesn’t always mean sustainable. Sandalwood oil is one example. Essential-oil producers steam-distill the fragrance ingredient—which has a rich herbal scent reminiscent of hops, eucalyptus, and Angostura bitters—from shredded sandalwood trees. The trees become richer in oil as they grow older and are harvested when they are between 15 and 30 years old. But demand has grown faster than the trees themselves, leading to unsustainable cultivation practices and even illegal harvesting of trees from protected woodlands in Australia, India, and Hawaii. The supply of sandalwood oil is volatile because of weather and labor issues, and difficult to scale up because of the long wait for mature trees. In fact, the global population of Santalum album , Indian sandalwood, is on the decline, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources . “Naturals