Palm oil, healthy rainforests, and your kitchen |

Palm oil (aka palmitate, palm kernel oil, and palm fruit oil) is hard on our planet’s lungs and then some. It’s a top-o-the-heap evil-doer when it comes to ubiquitous and environmentally-destructive ingredients.

Here’s a quick and unsettling lowdown: Palm oil’s bland versatility, shelf-stability and lack of trans fats make it highly desirable to those who seek processed-food ingredients to, well, make processed food. It’s in everything from chocolate to snack crackers to margarine. Remember the creamy center of Oreo cookies? Palm oil provides the famously unctuous mouthfeel.

It’s also in cosmetics, soaps, detergents and some plastics. Worldwide, it’s a popular cooking oil.

Last but certainly not least, it’s increasingly used for biodeisel production. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/31/business/worldbusiness/31biofuel.html

As you’ve heard, palm oil’s “moment” comes at the expense of the planet.

To keep up with demand, vast monocultures of oil palm are grown in Indonesia and Malaysia, where rainforests and peat forests are razed to make way for oil palm trees.

Indigenous people are uprooted and harassed, more carbon dioxide is pumped into the atmosphere and precious habitat is lost, sending species such as the orangutan on the express train toward extinction.

The destruction caused by the demand for palm oil is truly unsettling at a visceral level, even for those who have seen worldwide deforestation.

Chris Wille, chief of sustainable agriculture for the Rainforest Alliance,http://www.rainforest-alliance.org/ told me this: “It’s just mind boggling. I’ve been in this business for a long time and I feel like I’m pretty tough. I feel like I’ve seen a lot of burning forests, but what’s happening in Indonesia and Malaysia - it shocks even us veterans.”
If you need a visual of the rainforest being hacked into a moonscape, go here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7fFeJyXkBk

So, can you do right by buying organic palm oil?

Sadly, in this case the organic label may not be sufficient.

Organic certification (ONLY) bans the use of synthetic pesticides and fertilizers, but has NOTHING to say about rainforest management.

That’s right—you could burn down pristine rainforest, plant it with a palms, and STILL GET ORGANIC certification. Industry and green groups are trying to hammer about a certified-sustainable label that ensures responsible forest management. But right now, sustainable palm oil is both hard to find and controversial.

The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, an international 'organization' of producers, distributors and conservationists, came up with 'standards' to address deforestation and managed to get 1.3 million tonnes of certified sustainable palm oil onto the market last year.

Critics of this “green” palm oil cried foul (AND THEY ARE RIGHT ON!), alleging GREENWASH and weak certification standards... most of that oil has languished on the global market because many of the big players won’t pony up the extra money for it. (Surprisingly, CHINEASE buyers recently stepped up to the plate.)

Hoping to spur interest with a good old-fashioned public shaming, the WWF will soon issue a scorecard to show which major palm oil buyers have made commitments to sustainable palm oil.

THE WWF "SUSTAINABLE PALM SCORECARD" http://www.worldwildlife.org/who/media/press/2009/WWFPresitem12330.html

LIST OF COMPANIES THAT ARE LARGE USERS OF PALM: http://ran.org/the_problem_with_palm_oil/take_action/sticker/palm_oil_companies/

The Rainforest Alliance is also currently working with some palm plantations in Latin help them meet standards to earn sustainable certification. Within a year consumers will be able to find language on certain food products that will identify palm oil that came from Rain Forest Alliance-certified farms.

Right now there are no official seals or labels that you can rely on and sustainable certification for palm oil (how about 'Native Tribe & Orangutan Friendly')