To tell you to buy these palm-oil containing products

[Imchlibob]

Not a TAAT but something that I think deserves a thread of its own.

This is the snippet that I started responding to before realising that it needs a new thread.
Does have palm oil in it sadly but I think all spreads do.

The below is based on what I recall from a brief presentation at a zoo so I may have some details wrong but the broad thrust is accurate.
Not all palm oil is bad. See here.

There is sustainable palm oil - currently about 10% of the palm oil market - and the environment-destroying kind is the other 90%. But that 10% is struggling to grow because so many of us are avoiding all palm oil. Obviously a lot of people don't have time, energy or funds to let palm-oil issues dictate their shopping list. Those of us who do can have a better impact on the environment by supporting sustainable palm oil than by boycotting all palm oil.

For the same surface area of land a palm-oil plantation can produce 4 or 5 times as much oil as other oil crops like olives, sunflowers, rapeseed etc - no wonder food producers favour it. If it weren't for the devastating effect of monoculture plantations on biodiversity and habitat destruction it would be a miracle crop, dramatically reducing the quantities of land needed for farming. A sustainable palm-oil plantation works to maintain biodiversity and habitats by interspersing natural local plant life with the palm trees. Whilst this reduces the productivity to more like 3-4 times the volume produced by other crops that's still enough to be actually beneficial to the environment overall.

those of us who have thus far been boycotting all palm oil should instead make an active effort to buy and use products with sustainable palm oil - and if you have the time then write to the manufacturers of competitor brands that use unsustainable palm oil saying that you would be able to buy their products if they switched to sustainable palm oil.

It's generally unlikely that any large-scale food manufacture would re-write their recipe to exclude palm oil. However re-writing their buying policy to buy only sustainable palm oil is much more realistic.

Growing the proportion of the palm-oil market that uses sustainable product will have a much greater impact than boycotting the substance altogether.

A coalition of conservation charities are working together to publish this message - please do not boycott all palm oil - but please insist on sustainable palm-oil only

pdf document (2MB) of brands that use sustainable palm oil

Aunty
Thanks for that, now I will be reading till the wee small hours!

There is always a catch with these huge global companies isnt there? I dont trust any of them due to their terrible record on polution of native lands, land grabbing, exploitation of workers etc but its hard to deny your kids everything when everyone else is doing it but we try our best to avoid them. Looks like more researching for me

Dammit posted too soon. We do try to avoid palm oil wherever possible but its everywhere! And unfortunately our budget doesnt match our morals, I wish it did. We even gave up our once in a blue moon treat of Nutella!!, Kids were horrified but after some research they were disgusted at what was happening especially to the orangs.

We are hopefully going to Chester Zoo on hols I might ask a few awkward questions if they have a stand promoting RSPO

Exactly, Willow, PepsiCo etc have one true focus: their profits. To avoid bad publicity and boycotts they create a screen of ‘look we’re doing something’ respectability.
Underneath that it’s so complex. I haven’t got further than realising that RSPO is not a green light to buy.

Ah, that was my post on the other thread.

Many thanks Imchlibob for starting this thread for further discussion.

I had heard about the RSPO but also read** a while ago that the certification process was flawed and it was not necessarily a guarantee of sustainability. So have still been avoiding palm oil as it still wasn’t clear whether even the RSPO labelled stuff is actually acceptable.

The info online is mixed and it is hard to find anything from a reputable source that is very recent

Maybe things have improved at RSPO? Need to look into this again!

Palm oil is gipping, and even if it is 'sustainable' it still causes environmental issues.

Cross posted with AuntyElle!
That’s really useful, thanks. Definitely more research needed ...

I won't be buying products with palm oil or palm fat in because they have a really adverse effect on my skin.
I will literally have horrible zits appear on my chin area within 20 minutes of eating products that contain the stuff.
My body is telling me that it doesn't like the stuff and by god I am going to listen!!

Having read the first post again, I can't help wondering if the OP has just landed a new PR job promoting palm oil?

I've been to Borneo recently and seen the devastation to the environment and wildlife the palm oil plantations have caused. Unfortunately there is no guarantee of sustainability because of the flawed certification process.
I just stay away from the stuff.

I read in a magazine that you cannot trust that any palm oil is actually sustainable or green. The certification can actually be bought. I can't find the article right now but this is an interesting read.
wrm.org.uy/articles-from-the-wrm-bulletin/section1/green-oil-palm-plantations-are-a-scam-the-case-of-olam/

Another thing to be aware if there are actually over 200 different names for palm oil so you're not even always aware that product have it in them, for example sodium laurel sulphate which is in most toothpastes.

*of not if

www.palmoilinvestigations.org/names-for-palm-oil.html

No!!! Please do not advise people to buy 'sustainable' palm oil. There is no way of regulating it. Using products WITHOUT palm oil is the only answer. If you are interested in this subject, please look at the Palm Oil Investigations website here.

Cross post with StepIntoMyParlour.

There was a long webchat with WWF on the guardian on this topic, definitely worth reading, along with many informative comments below the line.
I also read an article in the telegraph Saturday magazine that basically said "sustainable" is just a bought status. Very small producers are losing their livelihoods because they cannot compete, even though they could actually produce sustainably given support.

It's just about profit for multinationals though, isn't it.

The Eden Project have got a good display about palm oil production, highlighting both sides of the debate, showing how palm oil plantations can be enriched with planting feensvetc in trees and so on; also making the point that if demand for palm oil drops, producers will simply switch to another crop which may be less efficient, have worse implications the environment and affect local employment & poverty levels.
There are no easy answers but I will continue to avoid palm oil.

There's no such thing as sustainable palm oil ! Every palm oil plantation was once rainforest home to animals which were wiped out and killed to put it there. Regardless of how long its been there you can't just slap a sustainable label on it like it makes the problems go away

There is an online shop in Australia called Biome. They recently switched to 100% Palm-Oil Free. Please take a look at the brands available on their website and then you can try to source those products locally.

www.biome.com.au/

We gave up Nutella (well dh and dd I don't actually like it) and have been thinking about buying Nutiva instead. It's at least twice the price but the palm oil is from a Fair Trade scheme (FairPalm) in Ghana. I try and buy Fair Trade chocolate so I like this (although for some reason they don't use Fair Trade cocoa in the spread which is odd, but their marketing is more focused on being organic I think).

I can't help wondering if the OP has just landed a new PR job promoting palm oil?

No I'd be really crap at PR - I work in the software and generally only communicate with geeks in real life.

Some interesting points here. I am not sure how to proceed given that my kids witnessed my previous stand against Nutella et al being comprehensively overturned and people who we ought to be able to trust told us very explicitly that we would be helping the environment more by deliberately buying only sustainable palm oil rather than no palm oil (personally I prefer no-palm-oil products for me but my kids are ultra picky eaters who would honestly rather starve than eat the nice wholesome natural stuff that I favour and do get a lot of processed food that tends to have palm oil in)

Palm oil is in just about everything :( Have a look at the ingredients in packet soup...

Juells, it is possible to avoid packet soup. Palm Oil aside, packet soup is still full of crap.

So it’s all about the Nutella?

Sustainable palm oil is fable told by big companies to provide an alibi for those who’d rather eat their greasy so called chocolate than do their bit for the environment.

Almost all crops are grown on land that was once forest, as one poster has pointed out most of Europe was once forest. We just chopped it all down to make way for industrialised food production and housing a long time ago.

Sustainable palm oil can’t be grown where primary rainforest has been cleared to make way for it. It is grown on land that has already been cleared and wildlife corridors created for animals to move freely. The alternative to sustainable palm oil is other oils that use far more land to make the same quantities. They are also grown as monoculture, so bad for biodiversity, and most require greater amounts of chemicals to grow.

You won’t find many major conservation organisations, including those that work tirelessly to conserve orangutans, who support a boycott these days. Boycott is a very outdated message, which was support a by some conservationists many years ago before sustainable options had progressed to where they are now. Most leading conservationists in the field are in favour of supporting the industry to become more sustainable, by driving demand for sustainable oil and working with the industry to be better - this is what is best for biodiversity. It’s a more complicated message which is why some - eg. Iceland - prefer a palm oil free message, because is is easier to understand. But that doesn’t mean it is best for wildlife.

Imchli- are your children old enough to understand what the wholesale destruction of rainforests means in terms of diversity and species loss? Even small children can understand that animals can't survive when their habitat is destroyed.