What is Palm Oil?

It’s an edible vegetable oil that comes from the fruit of oil palm trees, the scientific name is Elaeis guineensis. Two types of oil can be produced; crude palm oil comes from squeezing the fleshy fruit, and palm kernel oil which comes from crushing the kernel or the stone in the middle of the fruit. Oil palm trees are native to Africa but were brought to South-East Asia just over 100 years ago as an ornamental tree crop. Now, Indonesia and Malaysia make up over 85% of global supply but there are 42 other countries that also produce palm oil.

Palm oil is an extremely versatile oil that has many different properties and functions which makes it so useful and so widely used. It is semi-solid at room temperature so can keep spreads spreadable; it is resistant to oxidation and so can give products a longer shelf-life; it’s stable at high temperatures and so helps to give fried products a crispy and crunchy texture; it’s also odourless and colourless so doesn’t alter the look or smell of products. In Asian and African countries, palm oil is used widely as a cooking oil, just like we might use sunflower or olive oil here.

Where exactly is it found?

Palm oil is in nearly everything – it’s in close to 50% of the packaged products we find in supermarkets, everything from pizza, doughnuts and chocolate, to deodorant, shampoo, toothpaste and lipstick. It’s also used in animal feed and as a biofuel in many parts of the world (not in the UK though!).

What is the problem with Palm Oil?

Palm oil has been and continues to be a major driver of deforestation of some of the world’s most biodiverse forests, destroying the habitat of already endangered species like the Orangutan, pygmy elephant and Sumatran rhino. This forest loss coupled with conversion of carbon rich peat soils are throwing out millions of tonnes of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and contributing to climate change. There also remains some exploitation of workers and child labour.

What Solutions are there?

The Roundtable of Sustainable Palm Oil or RSPO was formed in 2004 in response to increasing concerns about the impacts palm oil was having on the environment and on society. The RSPO has a production standard that sets best practices producing and sourcing palm oil, and it has the buy-in of most of the global industry.

The RSPO has developed a set of environmental and social criteria which companies must comply with in order to produce Certified Sustainable Palm Oil (CSPO). When they are properly applied, these criteria's can help to minimise the negative impact of palm oil cultivation on the environment and communities in palm oil-producing regions.

Sustainable V's Palm Oil free

The team at The Orange Orangutan have done a lot of research in this area but by no means are we experts, this is purely our opinion and it is an incredibly complex and political matter however we believe if brands can avoid using palm oil altogether then we would always encourage them to do so.

There are many reasons we believe this in general we are using far too much palm oil, it's cheap and versatile but this means our global consumption of it in our view makes it unsustainable. We have read reports that the RSPO isn't doing enough, the RSPO is a Non for Profit and unfortunately may have limited funds to ensure the companies are following the rules in place. The effectiveness of the RSPO is frequently debated, the Environmental Investigation Agency found the RSPO to be failing to deliver on its standards and they are set too low.

The punishment for companies that breach guidelines is minimal and crucially, evidence is mounting that the RSPO is unable to stop the corruption between growers, auditors and government officials. In a nutshell it seems that claims of sustainable palm oil are often misleading as it is very difficult to make sure palm oil is being sustainably produced. It has also been reported that some companies also use mass balance, this means that there is uncertified palm oil content mixed with a little bit of certified.

In addition Greenpeace UK found out it took the RSPO 14 years to ban its members from destroying forests and to our knowledge this still isn't being enforced, I quote their article ''the RSPO is about as useful as a chocolate teapot"!

While people argue that palm oil is the most efficient type of vegetable oil and it would be wrong to boycott it altogether as other oil crops would need even more land to produce the same amount of oil, this is true but other substitute oils like rapeseed and sunflower can grow in less eco-sensitive temperate countries where there aren't any endangered animals, we are very sadly losing around 25 Orangutans a day in Indonesia.

Final Thoughts...

Palm Oil is here to stay... We will never be able to completely cut it out from all of our products and foods and while it's great to see more people following a vegan lifestyle, being vegan and palm oil free wouldn't be sustainable for the average human. We therefore believe one way to lower our palm oil consumption would be within the beauty industry and household products. While the beauty industry only reaches 2% of global palm oil production, it can still be found in as many as 70% of all beauty products.

We believe every consumer has the right to purchase products which aligns to their lifestyle choices and personal preferences. This is why we wanted to give consumers the option of purchasing palm oil free products rather than sustainable Palm Oil.