Palm Oil
Around 24 million hectares of rainforest have been destroyed in Indonesia, That’s an area the size of the UK. About 60% of the processed goods in the supermarket contain palm oil. Palm oil is great for big food and cosmetics companies, because it’s cheap and versatile. It’s used in many of the things we use or eat every day: shampoo, bread, toothpaste, detergent and even snacks and chocolate bars.
Deforestation and Global Warming
The palm oil industry has been a disaster for the world’s forests, wildlife and climate. Palm oil is mostly grown in Indonesia and Malaysia, two tropical countries with large areas of rainforest home to tigers, orangutans and other species that are found nowhere else on earth.
RSPO Is it a Con?
In 2004, the palm oil industry set up the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO). RSPO members have their palm oil ‘certified sustainable’ and brands using this palm oil get to claim that their palm oil is ‘sustainable’, but the RSPO is about as much use as a chocolate teapot. It took 14 years for the RSPO to ban its members from destroying forests – which it finally did in November 2018. It still hasn’t enforced this new rule – and RSPO members are still destroying forests and getting away with it.
RSPO members were right at the centre of Indonesia’s 2015 forest fires crisis. This year, the fires returned – and roughly three-quarters of the fires linked to palm oil companies were on RSPO members’ land. This means that so-called ‘sustainable’ palm oil growers are – in some cases – at the forefront of Indonesia’s environmental crisis.
Products that contain Palm Oil
Most supermarkets in the UK and many consumer brands like Nestlé and Mondelez use RSPO palm oil in their products, because its cheap, but palm oil is 50% saturated fat – not exactly great for your health ! Most products that contain palm oil are UPF’s and its hard to purchase your weekly products without buying products that contain palm oil, or palm fat, Vegatable oil, or derived from it, like glycerin, E471/E472. If you can try to avoid it and maybe we can start to repair the damage.