Hello my name's Sophie I'm from Lush UK buying team and today we're in deepest darkest Dorset
to visit Jim at Dorset Charcoal Company, Jim's going to show us how he produces some of the
charcoal that we use in our products. So where has this wood actually come from, is it locally felled?
Yeah it's within within a sort of four miles of here. Do you get quite a lot of wood thing you get through then?
We're producing in the region 30 tonnes of charcoal a year so in this kiln there'll be
a ton and a half of wood will go in Mike and I stacking in now and we'd hope to get about
1/4 of charcoal out. We're basically loading the kiln ready for firing in a bit. The coolest part
of the kiln is the edge, so the thinnest wood goes to the edge and the larger stuff goes to the middle.
Why is it actually better to use local charcoal?
Basically it comes down to the structure of English hardwoods. It's a lot lighter structure than the imported variety
imported varieties like I say are very dense and they tend to tend to only have about 40 to 60
percent carbon. Whereas the British charcoal is nearly 90 percent because of the process and
because the type of wood we use, it saves all the resources in shipping something halfway around
the world the majority of imported charcoal is from really dodgy sources hmm and it comes on
the back of a lot of deforestation Olbridge charcoal certainly that I know of, and there's about 300 or
so burners in the country is from sustainable sources and if it's from sustainable sources
it means the management of our woods is improving; which only benefits the wildlife in this country
and the flora and fauna. What sort of charcoal do you actually supply to Lush then Jim?
Basically, the larger charcoal that comes out the kilns will go off for other uses be it barbecues
or pollution filters, but what we end up with every every kiln will end up with a few sack fulls
and the smaller grains which are then crushed through a grinder, we then sieve it again
and that sieving process provides us with the very fine pure charcoal powder that Lush take.
Hey that'll do, that's the last one, Mike would you mind jumping up and getting the chimney out please?
Now bring the brazier over.
The chimney was needs an access hole to a pile of charcoal we've left at the
bottom of the kiln, so what I've done here is I've got a few of the half burnt bits
that we had lying around from the last burn, got them going and that's like our charge
for this, so I'm what I'm going to do now is hop up there and tip them down the hole,
that will start the whole burning process off. I'll leave it to you then
Ok so what part of stage are we at now then, Jim? Well Sophie this is a kiln obviously
we've produced charcoal in, we're about halfway through emptying this one as you can see that
the charcoal looks just like the timber that went in and it kind of emphasises the fact that
what we're doing is we're basically wood wood Colliers is another term for charcoal burners
we're cooking wood, so the shape and the nature the wood is the same as it as it went in and
what we've done is we've we've driven off all the moisture and the water out of the timber and all
the oil has been vaporised and what you're left with is a product that's nearly ninety
percent carbon and obviously the big lumps like this we sack up straightaway and they go off for barbecue charcoal.
In every kiln, we'll end up with a lot of small pieces, hmm like that, such as these, when we've taken all the large
stuff out, we will then sack up that and it goes off to our yard and like I was saying earlier,
we will then grade that to get out roughly pieces like that sort of ten mil pieces mmm
the pure charcoal we then grind that, sieve it and that's the powder that we produce for Lush. Lovely.
Like I was saying earlier, it's all about we're cooking the wood and the way we cook it is by restricting
the oxygen, so by sealing the lid up with soil here we ensure that the only air getting into
the kiln will be through the air inlets the four air inlets that are left you've basically got
the chimney which is an outlet followed by an air inlet and then by controlling how much cover we
put across those is really our control dial if you like on the on the side of a large oven.
So here we have the tiny pieces of pure charcoal which are then ground down into
powdered form and then used in products like Coal Face Soap and Dark Angels Cleanser.