“Essential oils are not actually oils. They are the highly concentrated plant constituents made by distilling large quantities of whole plants with water, steam, solvents, or mechanical methods. People have used these oils for thousands of years. Recently they have boomed into a $24 billion industry.

Despite their many healing powers, the everyday use of essential oils has some downsides. First, the manufacturing of essential oils raises significant sustainability concerns: It takes large amounts of plant material to distill the oils. In some cases, thousands of pounds of plants are used to produce a very small amount of oil. Most plants for essential oils are eitherover-harvested from the wild or grown overseas in large monocrop farms. They are sometimes ripped entirely out of the ground for distillation.”

Source: Fix.com

Wild species threatened by the essential oil trade include:

• rosewood
• sandalwood
• Amyris (West Indian sandalwood)
• Spanish lemon thyme
• cedarwood
• jatamansi
• gentian
• wormwood
• white sage
• wintergreen

Continue reading here to learn How to Plant a Fragrant Healing Garden and How to Use Aromatic Herbs for Healing.

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