The Ultimate Guide to Palm Oil?

Conscious Consumer

What is Palm Oil?

Palm oil is a vegetable oil that comes from the fruit of oil palm trees. A specific tree variant of the 2,600 species of palm trees (primarily the African oil palm Elaeis guineensis). You can get two types of oil out the palm fruit. Crude palm oil from the fruit and palm kernel oil from the pit. This palm tree species are originally from Africa but were introduced to South East Asia just over 100 years ago. Indonesia and Malaysia produce the majority of the worlds palm oil followed by Thailand, Columbia, Nigeria, Guatemala, Honduras and Papua New Guinea.

What are the Environmental Effects of Palm Oil?

Currently 20 million hectors of land is growing palm oil around the world. (this equates to over 37 million football fields for all my U.S. fans)

According to WWF “Around 90% of the world's oil palm trees are grown on a few islands in Malaysia and Indonesia – islands with the most biodiverse tropical forests found on Earth. In these places, there is a direct relationship between the growth of oil palm estates and deforestation.”

It is clear that palm oil has a direct negative environmental impacts from the current production process in many ways. Let’s take a deeper look at a few of these issues.

DEFORESTATION :

The first immediate impact is deforestation leading to loss of biodiverse habitats. These tropical forests are home to both plant and animal species that get completely wiped out in order to make space for the oil palm trees. Unfortunately this minimizes the area in which many animals can call home. WWF explains that “Forty-three percent of Tesso Nilo National Park in Sumatra—which was established to provide habitat for the endangered Sumatran Tiger—has now been overrun with illegal palm oil plantings.” Similarly Orangutans are seeing a loss of habitat in Borneo and Sumatra due to deforestation. The saddest part is that these animals are not being relocated to similar habitats or sanctuaries but rather dealing with the aftermath of deforestation and sometimes caught in the middle coming face to face with these workers. Not only are wildlife species loosing their land but local communities are loosing land rights over palm oil development.

AIR POLLUTION :

Deforestation also leads to more environmental issues. One being air pollution. In order to clear the forests, the majority of the time they slash-and-burn the current vegetation. This leads to heavy smoke making these areas unhealthy for local communities and workers. The slash-and-burn method is more common during the dry season, in order to take advantage of the dry conditions, however this usually leads to uncontrolled fires that expand onto additional land. These fires lead to unhealthy levels of polluted air in nearby cities causing schools to close when the air reaches extreme unhealthy levels. Continuous high levels of air pollution leads to higher respiratory issues, lung damage and even premature deaths.

CLIMATE CHANGE :

These factors all directly lead to climate change due to the amount of carbon emitted into the atmosphere. According to WWF “The practice of draining and converting tropical peat forests in Indonesia is particularly damaging, as these "carbon sinks" store more carbon per unit area than any other ecosystem in the world.”

Carbon sink refers to a natural environment having the ability to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. These large forests are able to store carbon dioxide in the trees and peat soil. As soon as the forests are cut down or burned it releases the stored carbon back into the atmosphere at large rates.

What is Palm Oil used for?

More than you can imagine…Do you use lotion in the morning or enjoy a nice cool snack of ice cream? Then you probably consume palm oil. Like most of us we are unaware of every ingredient in our products. But you can find palm oil in a variety of products from food, shampoo, soap, beauty products and much more.

According to Orangutan Alliance there are over 200 different ingredient names for palm oil derivates. Some of these names include :

Calcium Stearate
Glyceryl
Palm Kernel Oil
Vegetable Glycerin
Vegetable Oil
Palmate
Palmitate
Stearic Acid
Sodium Lauryl
and many more.

This is not to say you should memorize the full 200 name list and check every ingredient but rather to show how companies are able to hid the true ingredients from the consumer by making it more complicated than a single name.

Can Palm Oil be sustainable?

In 2004 WWF brought together all industries involved in palm oil production to talk about sustainable solutions. Some of these industries include manufacturers, traders, producers, retailers, banks and investors, social NGO’s, environmental NGO’s and small farmers. This group became the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), a group trying to source sustainable palm oil through global standards.

RSPO has developed a certification standard outlining criteria in order for palm oil to be labeled sustainable. Some of these principles include fair working conditions, protection for local peoples lands, no clearing of “primary” forest, protection for wildlife, reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and minimized industrial pollution. With these standards the RSPO has certified about 20% of the worlds palm oil. (According to the RSPO website this number is from 2017 but they don’t show updated numbers) This list of certification standards are revisited every 5 years.

AUTHORS OPINION :

Do these seem vague to you? Ya, me too. According to the RSPO website “The Principles & Criteria are a generic document. Since countries differ in their laws for the same criteria, such as minimum wages for workers for example, and there are cultural and other differences, the Principles &Criteria are further adapted for use by each country through National Interpretations.”

The website feels like RSPO measures success by the number of members they gain therefore producing a higher percentage of the worlds palm oil. After some searching, I wasn’t able to find a clear number of true environmental impact they are having by protecting forests, wildlife, workers or local communities. It can still be on the website but they did not make it prominent or easy to access information. The only numbers focused on the “Impact Page” represents number of members joined and hectares of land throughout the world.

OTHERS OPIONON :

Currently RSPO is not recognized by a variety of environmental NGO’s. Many of these groups still see issues with the way RSPO is sourcing palm oil as well as human rights issues in regards to the worker conditions. Deforestation has still been linked to many of the RSPO palm oil plantations.

The International Labor Rights Forum investigated 3 Indonesian plantations and claims, “We found serious human rights abuses at each of the three plantations. They include labor trafficking, child labor, unprotected work with hazardous chemicals, and long-term abuse of temporary contracts.”

Should we keep using Palm Oil?

Palm oil is able to produce more oil per land area compared to other similar vegetable oils. “Globally, palm oil supplies 35% of the world’s vegetable oil demand on just 10% of the land.” This proves that palm oil has the ability to be a sustainable crop due to its efficiency value, however we currently aren’t producing it in a sustainable manner.

We need to work to put in place sustainable standards from a trust-worth source. Although RSPO has attempted to do this it’s clear that they have a long way to go to prove they are meeting global sustainable standards including humane working conditions. But once this does happen, palm oil will have the ability to produce higher yield of oil on smaller areas of land then similar oils such as soybean or coconut oil.

Sources :

World Wildlife
Orangutan Alliance
BBC News
Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil Certification
Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil Impact
International Labor Rights Forum

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