Palm oil is everywhere – but what actually is it, and is ‘sustainable’ palm oil really any better for both people and the planet?
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Seventy million tonnes. That’s the estimated quantity of palm oil produced globally each year. Around 50 per cent of everything you see in a supermarket will contain the oil – from biscuits and crisps to deodorant, shampoo, toothpaste and lipstick.
Palm oil is uniquely versatile – and it’s this fact that makes it so attractive. The oil remains semi-solid at room temperature to keep spreads spreadable; is resistant to oxidation to give products extended shelf-lives; highly stable at high temperatures so fried products stay crisp; and is odourless and colourless so doesn’t alter the aesthetics of food.
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While production of palm oil continues to increase, there is a more unsettling reality that lies behind the popular ingredient. Harvesting palm oil requires large-scale deforestation, as sections of forest are cleared to make way to oil plantations. In turn, habitats become desolate and wildlife are displaced, wreaking havoc upon ecosystems.
However, a new type of palm oil – sustainable palm oil – has been touted as the cleaner, safer alternative to traditional palm oil. But is there really a sustainable way of producing palm oil?
Digging deep into palm oil
Palm oil is an edible vegetable oil originating from the fruit of oil palm trees. Two types of oil can be produced: crude palm or palm kernel. The former is made by squeezing the palm fruit, while the latter is produced from crushing the kernel in the middle of the fruit.
Many products that use palm oil aren’t clearly labelled. The oil can go by dozens of other names, such as Palm Fruit Oil, Sodium Lauryl Sulfate, Palmitate and Glyceryl to name a few (for the full list, click here).
Global demand for palm oil has seen a dramatic increase since the 1960s. Between 1970 and 2020, the world’s production of palm oil increased by around 40 times –an uptick from just 2 million tonnes to around 80 million tonnes.
Indonesia and Malaysia take top spot for producers, together accounting for more than 85 per cent of the global supply. These areas are also home to some of the richest biodiversity on the planet, a dichotomy that poses a real risk to biodiversity in the future if sections of forest are cleared to make way for more plantations.
A further 42 countries also produce palm oil, including Thailand, Nigeria and Papua New Guinea.
Of the total supply, 71 per cent is used by the food industry, 24 per cent for cosmetics and 5 per cent in biofuels for transport, electricity or heat. Having said this, the breakdown varies depending on the country being examined. For example, Germany uses most of its palm oil for bioenergy (41 per cent), driven by a push toward utilising biofuels.
Palm oil is also the world’s highest-yielding oil crop, meaning it needs less than half the land required by other crops to produce the same amount of oil.
Environmental concerns
One of the major issues with palm oil is the planting of the crops which produce it. As global demand surges, so does the desire for more land to grow palm oil, leading to farmers burning and cutting down entire areas of rainforest to do so.
Habitat loss caused by palm oil farming – often incentivised by financial aid in countries such as Indonesia – is believed to be the largest threat to the survival of both the critically endangered Sumatran orangutan and the endangered Bornean orangutan. In addition, plantations have displaced Indigenous communities.
As well as habitat and biodiversity loss, palm oil plantations also result in huge carbon emissions. Although palm oil was first sought after as a cleaner alternative to fossil fuels, studies show that palm oil biodiesel produces three times as much carbon as a fossil fuel equivalent. That’s because burning trees and surrounding peatlands – with vast swathes of carbon locked in them – is incredibly polluting.
In some countries, land that could instead be used to grow food crops is being utilised instead or the purposes of palm oil, raising ethical concerns that the desire for fuel is placed ahead of the need for vital foodstuffs in developing nations.
What’s the difference between palm oil and sustainable palm oil?
It might seem that the best solution to mitigating the impacts of palm oil is to cease its production entirely. Yet this is not the case: switching to alternatives would only exacerbate problems. This is because oils such as sunflower, rapeseed and soy have much lower yields per hectare than oil palm, so even more land would need to be destroyed to produce an equivalent quantity of oil.
As well as this, many farmers and families around the world are supported by their work on oil palm plantations and smallholdings.
Instead, harvesting sustainable palm oil is a better practice. In short, this oil is palm oil that has been produced with the lowest environmental impact possible – for example minimising effects on wildlife, and ensuring standards of human rights are upheld.
The largest sustainable palm oil scheme is the Roundtable of Sustainable Palm Oil. Any oil produced under these standards is allegedly deforestation-free. The scheme stamps its logo onto foodstuffs that have met its standards of palm oil production. Additionally, the PalmOil Scan app enables you to scan the barcodes of food products and view how major manufacturers source their palm oil ingredients.
However, there are issues that arise with using sustainable palm oil. Critics have noted that the RSPO’s certification system has loopholes, such as the fact that companies can pay for their own auditors.
As well as this, one study found that a substantial number of RSPO-certified plantations in Indonesia and Malaysian Borneo were established on land that was forest and wildlife habitat as recently as 30 years ago. Such findings highlight how RSPO criteria may not protect secondary forests from being turned into palm oil plantations.
The RSPO has also been criticised for not fully accounting for indirect land use changes. For example, while an oil plantation may not directly cause deforestation, its establishment can cause other land use issues, such as moving activities like cattle ranching or agriculture into forested areas, and thus leading to deforestation.
Ultimately, sustainable palm oil is a far better ingredient than its counterpart, but it is certainly not a perfect solution.
