By Ollie James, corporate sustainability expert and business development director at Bristol marketing communications agency Proctor + Stevenson
If you’re looking for something more confusing to solve than a Rubik’s cube, just look at the kerfuffle surrounding the recent Christmas advert by UK frozen foods supermarket Iceland. 
The tear-jerking advert shows a baby orangutan telling a little girl how his home has been destroyed by humans harvesting palm oil. It ends with a dedication to the “25 orangutans we lose every day” and a message declaring that all palm oil will be removed from Iceland’s own-brand foods.
Despite the advert being banned for being too political, Iceland have prompted a huge amount of media coverage over the past week along with outrage on palm oil’s damaging effects.
But is the situation really that straightforward?
From palm oil’s damaging effects on wildlife and forests, to its cheap versatility and economic benefits; hundreds of conflicting articles swarm the pages of Google trying to convince us that it’s either harmless, or downright environmentally corrupt.
So, what do we really know about palm oil? Now I’m no professor, but I’ve been looking in detail at this issue for some time, so if you’re completely unaware of palm oil’s effects on the environment or even what the stuff actually is, here are the facts.
With 60m tonnes produced each year, palm oil is the most-produced vegetable oil in the world. Originally sourced from the African oil palm in Guinea, palm oil comes from the fruit of oil palm trees that grow in tropical rainforests.
Today, palm oil is grown throughout Africa, Asia, North America, and South America, with 85% of palm oil globally produced and exported from Indonesia and Malaysia.
With Palm Oil being a popular choice amongst manufacturers due its high-yield and versatility; the demand for it is unstoppable and ever increasing.
Now it’s no secret that in multiple industries when it comes to generating revenue, corporations will try their very best to ‘drive efficiency gains’ (cut corners) by using lower-quality, environmentally hazardous ingredients or even questionable methods of production. And in this case, palm oil production happens to be the big money maker.
From tasty baked goods, cosmetics, biofuel, cleaning products and even medicine, it’s safe to say that palm oil is in almost EVERYTHING that we use. Just walk into your nearest supermarket, including Iceland and see for yourself if you don’t believe me.
It’s become abundantly clear to me that palm oil is the most efficiently produced type of oil you can come across and by the sounds of it, pretty damn useful. But since the demand for palm oil has risen, so have the environmental and social consequences.
One swift look online and you’ll discover that where the palm oil industry is concerned, many companies are practicing unsustainable farming methods to ensure production is possible and runs smoothly. In that regard, wild animals are either killed or caught and sold, children as young as 8-years-old are working in hazardous zones, women are only making $2.50 a day, and workers suffer injuries from working in dangerous and toxic conditions.
Indigenous tribes are threatened to sell their land for a pittance, with conflict often ending up in violence or death. It was also recorded (because it’s nice to throw in a statistic isn’t it) that oil palm production accounted for around 57% of all deforestation in Malaysia and Borneo between 1973 and 2015.
The tragic list goes on. So, as a result of palm oil’s problematic ways of production, an increasing number of people are choosing to buy sustainable palm oil, or simply boycott it completely. I mean at-first-glance, seems fair? If only negative connotations are associated with palm oil then surely, it’s better to avoid it altogether, right?
Wrong. After attending Bristol Zoo Gardens recently for the conservation lecture on ‘Sustainable Palm Oil: the challenges of communicating a controversial topic’, it seems things are a lot more complex than that. While boycotting palm oil may seem the logical option, moving to alternatives may be even worse for the environment.
Why is boycotting palm oil a bad idea?
Host and speaker of the night Katie Major, conservation psychologist and campaigns manager at Bristol Zoological Society says: “A lot of people seem to think the solution is boycotting palm oil. If you’re going to the supermarket and you pick up a product and it says it’s got palm oil in, you just put it down, you just don’t buy it; super easy. Unfortunately, it’s not that simple; boycotting palm oil is really not a good idea. Of all the land used for producing vegetable oil, palm oil only uses 6.6%, which is barely anything. And yet of all the output of vegetable oil, palm oil contributes 38.7%, which is a huge amount.
If you boycott palm oil, all that will happen is that companies using palm oil will just try and seek another vegetable oil. That means much more deforestation, much more land clearing, because they need much more land to get the same amount of vegetable oil than they would versus palm oil.”
If you boycott palm oil you’re punishing producers who produce palm oil sustainably and already have high standards”.
So, what is the solution?
Katie followed with “The answer is certified sustainable palm oil.”
Back to the facts.
In an attempt to solve the issues the palm oil industry is causing, the organisation Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) was founded in 2004. The RSPO is a non-profit organisation that brings palm oil producers, palm oil buyers and NGOs together to discuss solutions for the environmental and human rights problems related to palm oil production. Together they have created the RSPO certificate that indicates a product is made with sustainable palm oil.
According to the RSPO, almost 12 million tons (that’s 21%) of the global supply of palm oil is now certified as responsible and sustainable. According to SCS Global Services, a certification and auditing firm, several factors are behind the growth of sustainably sourced palm oil, including increased consumer demand and government regulations.
Earlier this spring, for example, the EU suggested a ban on the imports of palm oil for biofuel. In addition, more food companies are committing to ending deforestation within their supply chains, which helps drive up demand for RSPO-certified palm oil.
But what really is sustainable palm oil and can we trust it?
Katie says: “So there are four types of certification for sustainable palm oil. The first one is ‘Identity Preserved’ sustainable palm oil. This is the goal, this is the top, this is what every company wants in their product. It means that, if you go into supermarket, you pick up a pack of biscuits and it has palm oil in it, you can trace that palm oil all the way back to the plantation that it was produced in.
The second one is ‘Segregated’ which is pretty much the same as Identity Preserved, but it doesn’t have that transparency, which means it unfortunately can’t be traced all the way back to the plantation. It’s 100% sustainable, but what they do is mix all thesustainable palm oil from different plantations together.
The third one is ‘Mass Balance’ which means that palm oil in your biscuits might be sustainable, it might not be. And the reason is, is that when the palm fruits go to the mill, the mill will accept unsustainable and sustainable and they’ll mix it all together.
And the last one is ‘Book and Claim’ which means that, if you’re a company and you want to be supporting sustainable palm oil but unfortunately can’t source it for whatever reason, what you do is you buy palm oil (sustainable or not) then you give money to farmers on the ground who are producing sustainable palm oil to make sure you are supporting the production of sustainable palm oil.”
While this seems like a very positive development and possible solution to the
problem, for me, it’s hard to be completely convinced.
In reality, the RSPO certificate and the label of ‘sustainable palm oil’ can feel a tiny
bit woolly. Many big producers of ‘sustainable’ palm oil can’t indicate where all their
palm oil is coming from and companies could potentially cheat the system to get
around this, making it a game of Russian roulette on whether its sustainable or not.
OK…so what’s the actual solution?
The analysis from the International Union for the Conservation of Nature says “If we
ban or boycott palm oil, other, more land-hungry oils will likely take its place. Palm oil
is here to stay and we urgently need concerted action to make palm oil production
more sustainable, ensuring that governments, producers and the supply chain honour
their sustainability commitments.”
Which leads me nicely back to the reason for Bristol Zoo’s campaign.
Bristol Zoological Society has recently launched a sustainable palm oil project in an
effort to promote the use of sustainable palm oil.
Visitors to Bristol Zoo Gardens are being asked to join its new campaign to thank UK
supermarkets which use sustainable palm oil in their own-brand products. They are
also being asked to send ‘thank you’ emails to three major chains – M&S, Waitrose
and Co-op, that use sustainable palm oil, and encourage them to label their
sustainable own-brand products.
Katie says: “We are committed to promoting a world where palm oil is 100 per cent
sustainably produced. We want to keep focusing on labeling because we think that all
palm oil that’s sustainable should be clearly labelled, and as consumers, we should be
able to go into a shop and buy a product that contains sustainable palm oil.”
Overall, if I had to apply an analogy here, I would look at this like cars and pollution –
the answer wasn’t to scrap all cars completely. It was to find a more environmentally
sound way of operating them which is now through the use of electric and hybrid
vehicles.
Bristol Zoo believe in educating people on the importance choosing sustainable palm
oil. Boycotting it entirely shouldn’t be the knee-jerk reaction here because it’s simply
not the answer and ads like the one promoted by Greenpeace and Iceland are really
not helpful.
For more information on Bristol Zoological Society’s campaign go to
http://www.supportingspo.org/ and remember to support sustainable palm oil!
Sources;
https://www.bristolzoo.org.uk/save-wildlife/conservation-and-research/palm-oilproject
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jun/26/palm-oil-disastrous-forwildlife-
but-here-to-stay-experts-warn
https://www.triplepundit.com/2017/06/rspo-achieves-gains-sustainable-palm-oilproduction/
https://medium.com/carbongrid/the-dirty-truth-about-palm-oil-d861071f33dc
https://thegreenvegans.com/why-palm-oil-is-bad-but-boycotting-it-even-worse/
https://inews.co.uk/news/environment/what-is-palm-oil-why-so-bad/
