What's the problem with palm oil?

The other day while surfing the web I came across a comment warning people about palm oil in their vegan food staple alternatives. I went to my fridge and checked a few of my dairy-free alternatives to find that sure enough, my Becel vegan margarine used 6% palm oil. I was glad to see that my other products were seemingly safe from the “palm oil travesties”, but it makes you wonder – what other ingredients in these products could be harmful to the environment and to human rights? These vegan products are seen as being healthier and safer alternatives, but after some research, I began to question “If it has palm oil in it, is it really better than its dairy equivalent?”.

Palm oil is made from the fruits of a tree called the African oil palms. As you could likely deduce, these trees originate from Africa (west and south-west to be precise). They are now also found in Indonesia and Malaysia. They grow naturally in tropical rainforest areas but now are planted and farmed for the sole purpose of producing palm oil. Why? Because, as Dr Emma Keller from the World Wide Fund for Nature states, “Palm oil is in close to half of the products we buy in the supermarkets – in everything from shampoos and soaps, to pizzas and biscuits. It’s everywhere.”

Wait, what? You need to worry about palm oil being used in more than your vegan products!? Yup, I’m afraid so. Start checking not only your pantry, but the bathroom cabinets, your cosmetic supplies, and cleaning products. Find more on this here.

Here is an easy-to-read list of the harmful effects of palm oil:

1. Environmental Impacts

Did you know that 300 football fields are cleared every hour to create space for palm plantations? Deforestation for palm plantations has serious impacts on biodiversity and ecosystems in the countries that it is produced in. This unsustainable development is ruining habitats and significantly contributing to climate change by emitting dangerous amounts of smoke into the atmosphere.

2. Impacts on Animals

As a matter of fact, the clearing of forests for palm oil production has been blamed as a leading reason for the endangered status of orangutans. Why? Well, the Orangutan Conservancy estimates that 80% of their natural habitats have been lost over the last 20 years. It’s not only orangutans that are in danger of extinction, other endangered animals include certain monkeys, tigers, elephants, bears, leopards, and rhinoceroses. Additionally, the destruction of their habitats has made these animals more vulnerable to poachers. Not only because the animals have to venture further into human civilization to find food, but because the road networks constructed on the plantations allow poachers to easily drive to an area and find their target rather than having to venture through inaccessible forested areas.

3. Impacts on Humans

The Palm Oil industry is ranked by the U.S Department of Labor as in the top four worst industries for forced labor and child labor. These plantations are found in poor, rural regions. Although it provides the locals with work, they are vulnerable populations that are too often taken advantage of for the financial benefit of the government and corporations. Due to the environmental destruction that this industry causes, the local people are losing the land that they depend on for sustaining their livelihoods and thus have very little choice other than to become plantation workers. Work conditions tend to be degrading and they receive very little in return for their work. As mentioned, the palm oil industry has also been linked to child labour in Indonesia and Malaysia. One report states that many of the workers are there due to debt bondage or because they were taken by human traffickers.

Bonus Fact: Palm oil is not the best option for your health either since it is high in saturated fats. Just one tablespoon of it contains 55% of the recommended daily amount.

What are the solutions and what can you do? Well, it’s hard to say and ultimately up to you to decide. You could try to only buy products that do not contain palm oil, however, some experts say that withholding from those products is not the solution. Alternatively, a group was formed in 2004 called the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) in order to enforce strict guidelines on how palm oil can be produced in a sustainable and certified way. What I do encourage everyone to do is spread the news about palm oil, so hopefully, we can at the very least support the important work that RSPO is doing and speed up the process of having only certified palm oil in our products.

Sources:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/39492207

http://www.onegreenplanet.org/animalsandnature/top-10-facts-you-need-to-know-about-palm-oil/

http://www.saynotopalmoil.com/Whats_the_issue

http://www.onegreenplanet.org/animalsandnature/5-reasons-to-avoid-palm-oil/