Body Shop coconut body butter is, in my opinion, the best body butter on the market. I have tried other brands but I don't think they compare to the Body Shop butter. I've been using it for years now and I love it. I am a big fan of all the Body Shop Body Butter range but there's just something about the coconut flavour that is very special.
I have the butter in both sizes. There is a 50ml tub, this retails at £5.00, and a 200ml tub, which costs £12.50. The 50ml size is perfect to slip into your suitcase for holidays.
I find the body butter luxuriously creamy and soft. It is solid in the tub but scoops out easily with your fingers and melts into your skin upon application. It looks lovely too - pale cream in colour - and is silky smooth to the touch. It looks and smells almost good enough to eat in the tub; rich but subtle at the same time. Unlike other body butters I have tried, the Body Shop body butter smells authentic and there are no underlying chemical or manmade smells, which is something that I have noticed in body butters made by other companies. To me, it simply smells of holidays. I always associate coconut with holidays - I don't know why - but it's a smell that I find comforting and familiar.
The smell lasts for hours. If I put it on in the morning after a shower, I can still smell the butter - very faintly - on my skin when I get home from work. Colleagues often poke their heads into my office to tell me that they can smell me from down the corridor. I am assuming that's a good thing, of course
I do tend to use a lot of it - too much really. It can leave my skin a little greasy, which some people may find off putting, but I don't mind because my skin baby soft. A tip that a Body Shop consultant gave me, after she looked shocked when I told her that I use a 200ml tub in around six weeks, is to take a little and rub it between your hands which will warm up the butter and make it go a lot further. I was really grateful for the tip, but I still trowel it on. For 'normal' users a large tub will probably last around three months if applied once a day so it's quite economical for most people - just not me!
I use this body butter instead of aftersun too. Obviously I would not recommend that anyone else to that, but it works much better than an aftersun lotion on my skin as it moisturises it much better. Please note that I would not use this on skin that is burnt and sore, I simply choose to use it rather than an aftersun moisturiser.
This product contains cocoa beans and shea butter - both produced in Ghana. The Body Shop states that it uses a fair trade co-operative of over 30000 small scale farmers to source their cocoa beans and purchases the shea butter from the Tungtevia Shea Butter Association which is made up from around 400 women from 10 villages. Body Shop ensures that these people are given a fair price for their products and it has given them a steady income and the opportunity to support their families and send their children to school.
There are other products in the coconut range, including: bath scrub, lip balm and body lotion.
You can find out the list of ingredients from the Body Shop website at www.thebodyshop.co.uk