Palm oil plantation in Java. (flickr/a_rabin)
Seventh Generation, one of the country's top makers of home cleaning and natural paper products, has announced a commitment to obtain 100% of the palm oil used throughout its product lines from certified sustainable sources by 2012.
According to one estimate, as many as half of the products in a U.S. grocery store contains palm oil. Because it is found in such a wide array of products — from foods and drugs to personal care items and detergents — U.S. consumption of palm oil has tripled from 324,000 tons in 2005 to 1 million tons today. But Palm oil production has come under increasing scrutiny in the last few years because of the widespread practice of clear-cutting rainforests to plant oil palm crops. The large monocrop plantations in Southeast Asia and South America fouling watersheds and driving people and animals from their land.
A report published by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in 2007 acknowledges that palm oil plantations are now the leading cause of rainforest destruction in Malaysia and Indonesia.
The "problem" that is the central driver in this global turn to palm oil cultivation and production is that it's too damn efficient. Palm oil is the world’s most productive oil seed. And added pressure is coming from a biofuel push. On average, biofuel crops grown in the tropics yield five times more energy as those grown in temperate zones. But even though clearing forests for palm oil biofuels has a net-negative impact on the climate, the practice is picking up steam because of the speed at which the plant grows.
Oil Drum/Mongabay
Palm oil isn't only found in the nasties, it's found in the good stuff too. Palm oil is a key ingredient in the plant-based surfactants used by natural cleaning product maker, Seventh Generation. Hence the move by the company to try and source their product sustainably.
Seventh Generation's new program will identify responsibly managed palm oil sources. Once certified by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, the company will transition all its purchasing to these new suppliers and create "100% traceable, environmentally benign palm oil supply chain."
Seventh Generation began altering its patterns of palm oil sourcing in early 2009 when it became the first company among its peers in North America to purchase sustainable palm kernel oil certification credits to offset use of the ingredient in the company's products. By purchasing the credits, Seventh Generation is paying a premium to palm kernel oil producers that use more environmentally responsible practices to produce and harvest palm kernel oil.
But some argue that there is still no system that can effectively trace palm oil beyond the processor to the plantation level, therefore, there really is no such thing as a truly sustainable palm oil. The UK recently took that very position by banning a new advertising campaign from the Malaysian Palm Oil Council that made several dubious claims about the sustainability of their oil and touted it as "the green answer".
Other holdouts, like Rainforest Action Network, are actively educating consumers about the environmental costs of palm oil production and enlisting their help in educating other consumers by stickering products in stores that contain palm oil.
Image via a_rabin
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