At the beginning of last month there was a bit of talk in the UK about a Christmas advert that had been banned from airing on TV due to it being to ‘political’ (which I think is bullshit but here we are). The advert can be found online quite easily and features a carton orangutan and a little girl, the little girl kept asking the orangutan why he wouldn’t go home to which to the orangutan told the little girl that he couldn’t due to deforestation that made him leave his home and the reason for the deforestation was directly related to the production of palm oil. It was a cute but sad advert about the reality of what is actually happening to these already threatened animals and how we can prevent these animals from losing their homes.
The advert left me with a few questions, questions like ‘what exactly is palm oil and how is it causing deforestation?’ So I did some research and over the last few weeks I have tried to implement change after what I have learned.
So, what is palm oil?
Palm oil is a type of vegetable oil that comes from the fruit of oil palm trees, and there are two different ways in which the oil can be produced; crude palm oils, which comes from squeezing the fruit, and the other is palm kernel oil, which comes from crushing the kernel, or stone from the middle of the fruit.
There are over 40 countries that produce palm oil!
How is palm oil causing deforestation?
Palm oil is produced by extracting the oil one form or the other from the fruits of the palm oil tree. These trees grow in countries like Indonesia and Malaysia and are planted in recently cleared forest areas that where cut down by palm oil production companies, for the sole purpose of making space to plant the palm oil trees to eventually produce palm oil. The deforestation of the forests were already vulnerable animals live is causing these animals to become even more vulnerable, and it has even killed many of these animals that are already in shockingly low numbers. Orangutans, elephants and even rhinos are in even more danger every time another part of their home is cleared for the plantation of palm oil trees.
After doing little research on the subject, I decided it would be best to swear of palm oil all together and I started checking the ingredients to all the products in my cupboards. I thought ‘I’m not going to support companies that use palm oil because they’re supporting deforestation and pollution’ but after doing some research I found out it wasn’t as simple as that. Turns out there is two different types of palm oil; sustainable oil and unsustainable oil.
It turns out that sustainable palm oil is better for the environment then unsustainable palm oil. Sustainable oil complies with global standards and palm oil that is labelled sustainable have supposedly been produced without the vast clearance of forests. Whereas unsustainable palm oil is produced without a thought about the environment or what animals happen to live in the habitats that are being cut down to plant the trees.
The big question I had after reading all these articles was ‘wouldn’t it just be better for the environment and these animals if we just stopped using palm oil, sustainable or not?’ Turns out I was wrong here as well, after doing more research on why we don’t just use alternative oils like coconut oil I found quite a few articles including one the WWF site that sheds some unsettling light on production of different oils. It turns out that it actually takes less land to produce more palm oil then it would to produce alternatives like coconut or rapeseed oil in space of palm oil. This image below shows how many tonnes of oil can be produced per tree and as you can see companies can produce way more palm oil from a smaller amount of crops then they can any other oils.
Any oil production will require the clearance of land first, but it seems that you can produce more palm oil with less space. If we decided to avoid palm oil all together than companies would be forced to find an alternative oil, which at first I thought ‘great! Less deforestation’ but it would actually end up being quite the opposite and we would just end up with another issue, because to produce alternatives like coconut oil four to ten times more land would be needed, and this of course would result in even more deforestation and habitats lost.
Does this mean I suddenly support palm oil? No. But, it does mean I won’t be boycotting palm oil all together. Instead I will be more aware of which kind of palm oil is in the products I plan to buy and use. I will be looking for products that only use sustainable oil and hopefully other people will also choose to do the same thing. By doing this we will encourage companies that are producing unsustainable palm oil to begin selling sustainable palm oil instead – which will work out better for everyone!
You can help save the forests by simply following this link to the WWF official website and joining the fight to save the forests!
https://www.wwf.org.uk/save-forests#edit-container
If you’d like more information on palm oil the ‘act for wildlife led by Chester Zoo’ have their own section on palm oil that is very insight full and packed with lots of great information
I hope everyone is having a lovely start to the new year. My new years resolution’s was to write more about the things I find important, so I’ll see you soon with another post!
Shannon x
Life With Shan 