Is eliminating palm oil really the sustainable thing to do?
After Iceland’s galvanising Christmas ad, the controversies around using palm oil have been propelled into mainstream debate. But how realistic is it to cut out the commodity?
Like sand, palm oil gets everywhere. It prevents pizza dough from sticking, chocolate from thickening and cream from collapsing. It replaces trans fats in spreads, smooths frosting on cakes and fries crisps to a, well, crisp. The list of its uses in food and drink goes on and on.
According to the WWF, palm oil is found in around half of the packaged goods in our supermarkets.
Today, palm oil production is the largest cause of deforestation in Indonesia and other equatorial countries with dwindling expanses of tropical rainforest. Indonesia’s endangered orangutan population, which depends upon the rainforest, has dwindled by as much as 50% in recent years.
We don’t seem capable of living without it, irrespective of the environmentally immoral situation it continues to enable. It remains the most consumed vegetable oil on the planet, with close to 65 million tonnes produced each year globally.
Retailer solutions
A couple of retailers have started to tackle this social dilemma. Ocado, for example, launched a virtual palm-oil free aisle last month, but even that was only able to
The biggest voice within retailers has of course been Iceland. In April 2018, the frozen food retailer pledged to remove all palm oil from its own-brand products, the first – and only – retailer to do so.
“Until Iceland can guarantee palm oil is not causing rainforest destruction, we are simply saying ‘no to palm oil. We don’t believe there is such a thing as verifiable ‘sustainable’ palm oil available in the mass market.”
Managing director Richard Walker, speaking after witnessing its impact in Borneo first-hand.
Swapping out palm oil invariably costs money. By pledging not to pass on extra costs to its customers, Iceland says it’s invested millions. “Our criteria were that replacements must have no adverse effect on the taste and enjoyability of the product, and must add no cost to the consumer,” says MD RichardWalker. “The second was always going to be the bigger challenge because all the alternatives to palm oil are more expensive.”
A case for palm oil
“The irony of cutting out palm oil altogether is that you’re actually loading the gun that will kill the last orangutan”
Andy Green, business development director at independent certification body BM TRADA.
The complication in simply declaring industry use of palm oil as inherently bad is that the potential alternatives have much greater environmental consequences. “The land space needed to harvest the world’s palm oil requirement is roughly the size of Spain”, says Green. “The space needed for the same amount of rapeseed oil would be the size of Canada.”
Which takes us to the second benefit of palm oil. It’s efficient and therefore affordable. Not only can oil be extracted from both the plant’s fleshy outer layer as well as its hard inner kernel, but it is around 10 times more productive than the likes of soya bean or rapeseed.
And yet, whilst it can be argued that palm oil is the best of a bad bunch, there’s no getting away with the truth that palm oil is damaging the environment too. Consequently, there remains a strong social movement to rid the retailer shelves of palm oil, which places most retailers between somewhat of a rock and hard place.
“There is a legitimate distinction” between sustainable and unsustainable palm oil, adds Jonathon Porritt, founder of Forum for the Future. “Until you start looking at substitution effects, and the degree to which they do or don’t produce better outcomes from a sustainable point of view, you’re not behaving rationally, you’re following an instinct. It’s not a decision taken in the long-term interest.”
4000%
Google searches 'for foods containing no palm oil' have increased by 4000% In the past 12 months
