Why Palm Oil Is Worse Than You Thought

Why Palm Oil Is Worse Than You Think

by Shelby Diehl

Unless you scan the ingredients section on every product you purchase, you may not realize how often you’re using palm oil. Palm oil is in almost everything— nearly 50% of all packaged products have this resource, from food to deodorant to shampoos, and even animal feed and biofuel.

But what is palm oil? Palm oil is an edible vegetable oil that comes from the fruit of oil palm trees. Two types of oil can be produced: the first is crude palm oil, which comes from squeezing the fleshy fruit; the second is palm kernel oil, which comes from crushing the kernel, or the stone in the middle of the fruit.

Palm oil fruit and a glass of palm oil.

© [weerachaiphoto] / Adobe Stock

Palm oil has become attractive to manufacturers for its preservation properties, making the product one of the most attractive vegetable oils on the market. It is also the highest-yielding vegetable oil crop, which makes it very efficient. Palms need less than half the land that other crops require to produce the same amount of oil, which makes palm oil the least expensive vegetable oil in the world.

The resource is appealing to consumers as well due to the supposed health benefits. Palm oil is a supplier of fatty acids essential for proper growth and development, packed with an assortment of antioxidants, vitamins and other phytonutrients. Beta-carotene, a prime component of palm oil, has proven to boost energy while encouraging hormonal balance. The antioxidants in palm oil are powerful defense mechanisms for the body, especially from free radicals—unstable atoms responsible for cellular breakdown and mutation.

The palm oil industry of Indonesia is highly valued in Indonesia’s economy due to the wealth sale of the crop brings, especially to the poor. Palm oil is Indonesia’s second most successful agricultural product and the industry is expected to continue to grow rapidly. With all this being the case, it seems harmless, right?

Not quite so. The palm oil industry has led to high rates of human trafficking. Workers on plantations are designated a daily quota that must be met, which is difficult to sustain. Entire families get involved to meet the quota, resulting in children being unable to attend school. This exploitation meets the United Nations definition of human trafficking.

The demand for palm oil has resulted in habitat destruction, deforestation and dwindling populations as an impact from palm oil monoculture. The Leuser ecosystem—located in the Aceh and North Sumatra provinces in Indonesia—lost more than 22,000 hectares of forest cover between January 2015 and April 2017.

The Leuser ecosystem is the last place on Earth where Sumatran orangutans, elephants, tigers and rhinos coexist in the wild. The ecosystem is home to more than 200 mammal and 500 bird species, yet palm oil companies continue to clear it. Even within Tesso Nilo National Park, established in Sumatra to provide habitat for the endangered Sumatran tiger, 43% of the park has been overrun with illegal palm oil plantings.

The destruction and conversion of tropical forests are especially damaging because the forests store more carbon per hectare than any other ecosystem in the world. The burning of forests during clearing releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, contributing to climate change. With the old growth forests of Malaysia and Indonesia estimated to hold nearly 20 percent of Earth’s stored CO2, the burning releases hundreds to thousands of years of CO2 back into the atmosphere.

Deforestation and the burning of trees for palm oil plantations.

© [Richard Cary] / Adobe Stock

Burning is regularly used to clear forests for plantations. The smoke has negative health consequences throughout Southeast Asia, contributing to lung diseases in animals and humans alike. The palm oil mills generate a lot of effluent, causing freshwater pollution that affects downstream biodiversity and humans. Meanwhile, the indiscriminate application of fertilizers and pesticides pollute surface and groundwater sources.

Nancy Reilly, a former resident of the Cape Fear Region, is well versed in palm oil, having witnessed palm oil’s damage first-hand in Sumatra and Borneo.

“My personal, biggest concern with regard to palm oil are the orangutans,” Reilly said. “Did you know a third species was discovered less than three years ago? These remarkable creatures share more than 95 percent of our DNA, yet they are being massacred with impunity to make way for palm oil plantations. Incidentally, these plantations are largely owned by multinational corporations.”

The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) is a non-profit uniting stakeholders from the seven sectors of the palm oil industry to develop and implement global standards for the sustainable production of palm oil. The RSPO has developed a set list of environmental and social criteria that companies must comply with to produce Certified Sustainable Palm Oil (CSPO). Currently, the RSPO has more than 4,000 members worldwide.

But, despite this, sustainable palm oil isn’t perfect. The RSPO took 14 years to ban its members from destroying forests—which came to be in November 2018. Yet, the new rule hasn’t been enforced, meaning RSPO members are still destroying forests without consequence. RSPO members were at the heart of Indonesia’s 2015 forest fires as well. In 2019, the fires returned and roughly three quarters of the fires linked to palm oil companies were on RSPO members’ land.

“I have definitely seen an increase in palm oil awareness,” Reilly said. “I’ve written to companies here in Europe to check out their position on palm oil. Many food companies are actively involved in searching for alternatives.”

This rising backlash against palm oil from conservationists and environmental organizations has led to a domino effect of change. In April 2018, the supermarket chain, Iceland, pledged to cut palm oil from all its own-brand foods by the end of that year. In December 2018, Norway banned imports for biofuel production. The brand LUSH shifted from using palm oil in their soaps to a blend of rapeseed and coconut oil. (It has since gone further and developed Movis, a custom-made soap base that contains sunflower oil, cocoa butter, extra virgin coconut oil and wheat germ.)

Palm oil is here, and it’s not going to disappear anytime soon. While the resource is difficult to avoid, there are alternatives we can opt for in the meantime. But, with the right awareness, wide-scale change and legislation can be implemented as seen in recent news.

Sources:

https://rspo.org/ https://www.greenpeace.org/aotearoa/ story/5-problems-with-sustainable-palm-oil/ https://www.worldwildlife.org/industries/palm-oil https://www.wwf.org.uk/updates/8-things-know-about-palm-oil https://www.wwf.org.au/what-we-do/food/palm-oil#gs.e3lvqx https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/feb/19/ palm-oil-ingredient-biscuits-shampoo-environmental https://www.bbc.com/future/ article/20200109-what-are-the-alternatives-to-palm-oil

Shelby Diehl is a junior at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington studying environmental science with a concentration in conservation and creative writing with a certificate in publishing. She is a Going Green intern and plans to pursue a career in environmental writing that will allow her to advocate for environmental causes worldwide.