Save Nature! Say No To Palm Oil, The Most Popular Vegetable Oil

Amy Goodrich

12 years ago

Today’s post is all about a vegetable oil abundantly found in your daily food and non-food products such as cosmetics and biofuel. As a big nature and animal lover, I couldn’t let the horrible truth behind this cheap oil go past unnoticed. So I made it my duty to tell you more about the dark side of the palm oil production and why you should take a better look at the products you’re buying.

Through this article, I want to raise awareness and hopefully you’ll all come to the same conclusion:

Say No To Palm Oil!

What Is Palm Oil?

First of all, palm oil shouldn’t be confused with coconut oil. Palm oil is obtained from the fruit of the oil palm tree. Its plum-like fruit is reddish in color and contains one single seed or kernel. They grow in large bunches that can weigh up to 40 to 50 kilograms or 80 to 100 pounds.

2 oils are derived from this fruit. Palm oil is extracted from the pulp of the fruit and can be found in many of your food sources. Palm kernel oil, derived from the seeds, is mainly used to manufacture a wide range of available cosmetics.

These days palm oil replaces animal and other vegetable oils in many of your daily products. Palm oil is a very productive crop and the yield is far better than other vegetable oils. And production costs are lower because the labor cost in countries where palm oil is grown is very low.

Why We Should Take Action

The demand for this cheap oil is growing by the day. To feed this demand tropical rainforest and peatlands in South East Asia have to make room for palm oil plantations. Global palm oil production has doubled over the past decades. Approximately 50 million tons of palm oil is produced annually. They expect the demand to double again by 2020. Meaning new plantations are being developed and old plantations are expanding, replacing millions of hectares dense, bio-diverse rainforest.

It is that bad that already more than 6 million hectares, in Indonesia alone, is dedicated to the production of palm oil. And it doesn’t stop there. Indonesia is making room for more. There are plans to deforest another 4 million hectares by 2015, only for the use of biofuel.

Efforts were made to set up a sustainable industry through the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO). Unfortunately, deforestation continues at a fast pass. Members of the RSPO (like Unilever, Cadbury’s, Nestle, Tesco, Cargill, and ADM), are taking no steps to avoid deforestation and land from local people has been taken without their consent. Actually, the RSPO creates an illusion of helping nature and producing palm oil in a sustainable way, just to justify their expansion.

Scroll down to learn more about palm oil’s negative impact on our world!

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Impact Of Palm Oil Production On Nature And Its Inhabitants

Deforestation

An area the size of 300 football fields of rainforest is cleared each hour in Indonesia and Malaysia to make way for the production of one vegetable oil. And all this is done with the support of the local government. They sell the ground to wealthy foreigners who log it first and sell the precious hardwoods, like teak, sandalwood, ebony and many other species. The remaining plantation is burned to the ground to make way for rows of palm oil. Locals are hired to work on those plantations at very little pay and unsafe conditions.

Short-Term Solution

After 20 to 50 years the soil will be drained of all the nutrients needed to grow the palm fruits. Palm oil production is, therefore, no long-term sustainable solution and will only lead to more deforestation.

Heavy Impact On Wildlife

Many animal species are losing their natural habitat. Sumatran tigers, orangutans, Asian rhinoceros, Sumatran rhinoceros, sun bears, elephants, clouded Leopards and much more are in the danger zone. If the production and deforestation don’t stop the world will lose all those magnificent animals. Already 90 percent, over the past 20 years, of their habitat has been destroyed to make way for palm oil trees.

But not only are they losing their habitat… while they burn down the remaining plantation to make way for palm oil trees, thousands of animals are burned alive. Tigers are now living closer to humans than ever. With all the natural food sources being killed they venture into villages and attack humans. They are now blamed to be dangerous man-eaters and being killed.

Global Warming

Production of palm oil is not only responsible for river pollution and erosion, the fires to burn down the remaining trees produce a toxic smoke and are one of the largest contributors to greenhouse gas production and global warming. Fewer trees mean less carbon dioxide being filtered out of the air to produce fresh air for us to breathe.

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Which Food Sources Contain Palm Oil

Palm oil and derivates from palm oil are being used in most of our packaged foods and cosmetics. They have a longer shelf life than other vegetable oils and butter. They also have the ability to make our cosmetics creamier.