Birch Birch (USAPennsylvania)

Sourcing Natural Birch Essential Oil

Birch essential oil has been used traditionally for many generations, typically only available in small volumes due to the complexity of raw material preparation and distillation. Sourcing natural Birch oil in large volumes, however, hadn’t been an option—until now.

In testing more than 50 “Birch” oil samples from 17 companies over the course of multiple years, dōTERRA scientists have found that all of these samples claiming to be 100% natural Birch oil had wintergreen and/or synthetic methyl salicylate—none were 100% natural and pure birch and very few samples had any natural birch oil at all!

Like Wintergreen, Birch is 99%+ Methyl Salicylate, which is relatively inexpensive to fabricate as a synthetic version, making it relatively difficult to detect adulteration. Because dōTERRA is committed to only offering CPTG essential oils which can be proven through our extensive testing, dōTERRA chemists have spent years researching and perfecting how to detect the differences between true Wintergreen, true Birch, and synthetic methyl salicylate.

Co-Impact Sourcing Story

Even after mastering how to produce natural and pure birch oil, there remained the challenge of a partner who could produce it and scale their operation to meet dōTERRA’s need for a permanent product offering. Similar to other scenarios where sourcing natural and pure oils can be complicated or even impossible, we knew that in order to ensure our own Birch oil supply but also a reliable raw material sourcing network we needed to build our own distillery from the ground up. Understanding distillation came with the help of a birch distillation expert – Skip from Kane, PA. Skip’s family has been producing pure birch essential oil and have kept extensive records of their experience in distilling pure birch essential oil.

Over the past five years, the dōTERRA Sourcing Team has invested enormous time, effort, and funding to build Woodside Oils with a focus on producing natural and pure Birch essential oil on a commercial scale. Birch trees now have added value for property owners. dōTERRA partners with local sawmills to separate birch trees from premium lumber. Production of Birch essential oil follows a circular economy model where we distill the bark and reuse all distilled biomass, leaving zero waste. The pulp can still be used for paper or other products, and the bark can become mulch which is distributed for free to the community for their own use. Producing the essential oil adds another layer of value and profitability for local birch tree owners and demonstrates greater appreciation for and use of the earth’s beautiful resources.

Community Impact

The Woodside Oils team not only continues to produce Birch essential oil but also supports the local community in Kane across various social initiatives with donations from the doTERRA Healing Hands Foundation®. Recently, these funds were used to purchase 100 hygiene kits for the local school district, expand the public library’s services, and upgrade a baseball field.