17 ms·

The Problem with Palm Oil

270 points by hispanic 7y ago

matthewaveryusa 7y ago
I've said this before, and I'll say it again: Palm oil is the most efficient oil to extract by practically a factor of 2 [1]. So in the long term, if global supply increases or stays stable, if we replace palm oil crops with another crop, eventually we'll make the problem worse and face more deforestation. [1] according to this http://journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_yield.html http://journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_yield.html I wish the article would go more in depth into what it would take: >Because when done right, oil palms can yield the highest amount of oil per acre of land, and if Western countries drastically decrease their demand for palm oil, that could bring a harsh disaster for many now reliant on a Western thirst for the oil.
- Gravityloss 7y ago
  Your comment has a lot of assumptions. For example if the choice is between a palm oil biodiesel powered car or an electric one, it makes a difference.
  - matthewaveryusa 7y ago
    Exactly, the focus should be on reducing consumption which, like you mentioned, comes down to consumer choice and policy. less biodiesel cars means less demand means less deforestation. Thing is, everything has palm oil in it, so reducing global palm oil demand is akin to reducing global consumption of goods.
    - throwbackThurs 7y ago
      I think we need to change consumer expectation about the products we use. Most of them don't need palm oil at all.
    - SamBam 7y ago
      > Thing is, everything has palm oil in it I feel like this is unnecessarily hyperbolic, unless I'm ignorant about the true spread of palm oil in "everything." This site [1] says that 72% of palm oil is used for food stuffs, all processed foods, which anyone can eat less of. Most of the remainder is in soap products. That doesn't sound like "everything" to me. 1. https://www.palmoilinvestigations.org/about-palm-oil.html https://www.palmoilinvestigations.org/about-palm-oil.html
    - adrianN 7y ago
      The only product I consume (occasionally) that has palm oil in it is soup concentrate. The trick is not buying processed food.
  - scythe 7y ago
    Even ignoring biodiesel, vegetable oils are in high demand for lubrication, and electric motors use less. Hopefully the switch away from heat engines will decrease overall demand for lubricants and reduce industrial vegetable oil consumption.
- Robotbeat 7y ago
  Reminds me of the Jevons Paradox. It's so efficient to produce that it's worth blanketing whole tropics in palm oil plantations to maximize the economic productivity of developing countries... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox (I'm not a huge fan of biofuels for this reason.)
clSTophEjUdRanu 7y ago
Why is it on me, the consumer, to worry about unethical palm oil sourcing?
- Gravityloss 7y ago
  Because lawmakers, trading blocks and international societies have failed to do a good enough job about it.
- tenebrisalietum 7y ago
  um, because you buy it, you're a typical price-sensitive non-1%er and companies produce it in response to your demand?
  - lowtto 7y ago
    how the hell do you not buy palm oil?
    - kazagistar 7y ago
      This. It's almost impossible to source anything without it.
      - ses1984 7y ago
        Buy whole fresh foods instead of prepared food. Buy less candy and cookies.
        blackandblue 7y ago
        all this got me curious and looked it up. here are a few things that often contain palm oil: bread, margarine, some cheese, ice cream, soap & shampoo, chocolate, pre-made pizza etc. looks to me like you might want to go back to making everything yourself or know every single brand around...
        7y ago
lowtto 7y ago
> environmental health and the well-being of poor and marginalized communities in pursuit of profits Heh. Isn't that too dramatic. So SEA countries are suppose to sit down and not able to sell anything? How bad is this too bad of a situation? The article failed to highlight this. To me it feels like someone just doesn't like someone else getting too much money at selling palm oil for some reason. I wonder which other industry that benefits from boycotting palm oil.
- mc32 7y ago
  It sounds a lot like politics. They’re against something but provide no suitable alternatives. Even if they provided an acceptable alternative to them, someone else would pipe up and mention a lot of problems with the alternative. On the end we’re supposed to somehow achieve the impossible. These things are lose-lose. The only real answer is to lower ave standard of living (in other words a western lifestyle needs to be recalibrated downward) and to lower total population via slowed growth -at least in high growth areas... but none of that is palatable to anyone.
  - christiansakai 7y ago
    I like the idea of lowering standard of living. Can you give me some examples?
    - arrosenberg 7y ago
      Carbon-positive ways we could lower SoL: no more individual vehicles, no more single family housing, massive increase in taxes on electronics and fuels.
    - mc32 7y ago
      Probably something akin to the ex-Yugoslavia with less repression. Though I suspect some repression would be necessary to achieve that. I don’t say that in a positive way —but I don’t think people would volunteer for such a state.
  - TOGoS 7y ago
femiagbabiaka 7y ago
This hits well on my biggest problem with a lot of liberal solutions to climate change: not enough systems thinking. In Europe and elsewhere, politicians got to celebrate the adoption of biofuel, and now they also get to be righteous about banning it. Given how terrible almond production is for the environment as well, I could see a similar move being made there. Who is responsible for evaluating risk in these situations? Who is modeling effects on our ecosystem when they promote $SOLUTION as panacea?
- cjblomqvist 7y ago
  Couldn't agree more. That's why simple policies which do not dabble into the how, just the end effect, typically works better (sorry for no references, but AFAIK from my Master's on the subject it's pretty well established). That's why carbon tax (especially a global one) is such an attractive policy. Of course, there are issues with that as well, but generally it'll probably (and seems to) have the largest and best effect long term.
  - kazagistar 7y ago
    Only if the carbon tax is applied retroactively, with interest, to make up for the dramatic economic inequality generated by countries who already got ahead economically by wrecking the atmosphere. Otherwise, it's just another way developed countries are using to keep themselves ahead of the rest of the world artificially with inhumane international policy.
    - ars 7y ago
      If you're going to do that, you'll also have to figure out a way to "charge" less developed countries for all the technology the developed countries invented. Like the cell phone: Developing countries never bothered with phone wires, they went straight to cell phones. Obviously I think both ideas are bad, but if you're going to advocate for your idea, you need to include everything.
    - aaronblohowiak 7y ago
      Baloney. If your line of reasoning held, Venezuela would be in a great place. Obviously, the differences between countries of various levels of economic development go far beyond who can put the most co2 in the air. Additionally, we are already seeing renewables become cheaper than fossil fuels. A great outcome would be leapfrogging - just like with cell phones vs landlines.
tengbretson 7y ago
Are problems like this an inevitability of international trade among economically unequal parties? If one party offers N dollars per ounce of palm oil, and the other party desperately needs money more than anything else, how could you expect anything less than the most desperate of measures taken to produce as much palm oil as possible? What are our options? No trade among economically disadvantaged countries at all? Devalue our currency? Paternalistic oversight?
- nickik 7y ago
  Countries very often also keep exporting when its not 'unequal'. While richer countries tend to have better environmental policy, that can also go in the other direction sometimes.
- ipnon 7y ago
  When international trade consists only of material and not migrants Mass wealth can only be generated in advanced economies. For the people of developing countries to benefit their countries must participate somehow in these advanced economies. With globalization they are allowed to participate only by the exchange of goods (either selling manufacturing in developed countries like China or natural resources in undeveloped countries like Congo). Before globalization, they could not participate at all. Advanced economies like the US and EU allow immigration only in a limited capacity, and they do so in way that benefits mainly the investor class, entrepreneurs and high-skill workers. Consider the typical Silicon Valley visa, the H1-B. The H1-B only allows corporations to sponsor highly-skilled workers to take jobs that are hard to fill with Americans. Think software engineers working at Google. This kind of immigration benefits investors in Google and workers in the software industry while increasing competition for Americans in the market for high paying jobs. Excluded from all of this especially are low-skill foreign workers. Everyone wants to be rich, and they will not stop this pursuit. As long as the majority of people in this world, those who are living in non-advanced economies, can only become rich by the selling of manufacturing and natural resources instead of their labor, then there will always be billions of people whose work effects the planet's environment in a significantly damaging way.
  - 7y ago
robgibbons 7y ago
As a soapmaker, I used beef tallow as a primary ingredient for a long time. More recently, trying not to use animal-derived products led me to try palm oil, as it's a nearly perfect substitute for tallow. The properties of palm oil are ideal for soapmaking, as well as many other products. Palm oil is one of those wonder ingredients that are useful in so many ways, and I truly hope we can find a way to make its cultivation more sustainable. For now, it's most important to know where your ingredients are sourced and the local impacts of harvesting them.
- Robotbeat 7y ago
  What about hydrogenated vegetable oil?
  - robgibbons 7y ago
    It's certainly used in soap, but I've never tried it. From what I understand it's often derived from soybean oil. Each type of oil/fat has a unique fatty acid profile that contributes different qualities to the product after saponification. Palm oil has a uniquely high palmitic and oleic acid content, both of which provide very desirable qualities to the end product.
    - fuzzfactor 7y ago
      Raw agricultural oils have a limited number of unsaturated chemical bonds between some of the atoms in their carbon chain structure. These carbons are available for reaction with alkalies such as lye, which saponifiy each pair of target carbons by adding a molecule of water H_O_H. H_ to one carbon, _OH to the adjoining carbon. The properties of the resulting material, soap, are not very similar to the original oil, it is quite water soluble by comparison, and capable of easily emulsifying regular oil & grease as expected for water rinsability. If the raw oil is instead reacted with hydrogen gas, one _H goes to each reactive carbon and the molecule after that point is referred to as being saturated with hydrogen. That's why they call it hydrogenated vegetable oil. Things like Crisco which are solid at room temperature and able to cook at high heat because they are hydrogenated, even though the raw oil they are made from is light and does not even solidify under refrigeration. The lye is not very reactive with vegetable oil that is already saturated (plain mineral oil is saturated naturally). The heavier fractions or varieties of palm oils can be solids at various room temperatures, and under refigeration the heavier waxes from olive oil often separate from the lighter fractions readily. But both of these waxy fractions are solid naturally just because they have a higher melting point, there has been no hydrogenation and the raw solid oil when melted can be reacted with lye as fully as raw light fractions can.
thehappypm 7y ago
I've been to Malaysia and seen this. It's interesting -- just row after row after row of palm trees. Otherwise it would all be jungle, but are jungles useful for local Malaysians? They're full of mosquitos and too dense to even really walk through.
- lm28469 7y ago
  They're probably useful in long term and not so obvious ways we won't figure out until it's too late.
- ascotan 7y ago
  Rainforests not jungles. Gotta talk the talk.
  - thehappypm 7y ago
    The people in Malaysia who I talked to used the word jungle.
    - mythrwy 7y ago
      I think poster means "saving the Jungle!" just doesn't have same appeal as "saving the Rainforest!"
- hef19898 7y ago
  I would assume there are ways to make palm plantations sustainable. I mean the German word "Nachhaltigkeit" comes from old treaties on forest cultivation, planting and harvesting in a way that keeps the overall forest intact. Seems we all forgot to care about the aspect quite a while ago.
- notahacker 7y ago
  The average Malaysian lives in a city and isn't greatly affected by jungles either way. There are small numbers Malaysians who live off the jungle and others who work in jungle tourism and conservation too. And other Malaysians who work on palm oil plantations, of course. The jungle's considerably more useful than palm plantations for the animals that live there, obviously.
SubiculumCode 7y ago
I
- SubiculumCode 7y ago
  My apologies. There was a posting snafu, and all that came out was an I.
ajna91 7y ago
To put a face on the problem, this video of an orangutan fighting to remain in its home while the forest is logged out from under it is powerful. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihPfB30YT_c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihPfB30YT_c
- gdubs 7y ago
  Attenborough’s recent film “Our Planet” had an episode dedicated to Palm Oil monocultures and the displaced and dying orangutan. Heartbreaking. Good series if you haven’t seen it.
SubiculumCode 7y ago
In terms of climate change, palm oil seems to be a really really bad substitute for other oils. I'd support increased tariffs on palm oil, and moneys to subsidize keeping rain forest.
- vsyu 7y ago
  Yeah, I had heard palm oil isn't the healthiest for you but didn't realize that it had so many environmental implications as well...
frandroid 7y ago
> 92 to 184 teragrams of carbon dioxide Usually emissions of CO2 are measured in tons... This is a sneaky measurement change. wtf is a teragram? Okay, turns out it's a million tons, or as we used to call it, a megatonne. WHYYY
- Mirioron 7y ago
  Because grams, kilograms, megagrams, gigagrams, teragrams, petagrams, exagrams etc.
kokey 7y ago
It's refreshing to see an article actually pointing biofuels policy being the dominant driver of palm oil related deforestation. If I remember right another problem is that India was expected to become a big palm oil producer where they are historically one of the biggest palm oil importers. This unfortunately didn't happen, somehow the upfront cost and time to production was something that was somehow difficult in India where Malaysia and Indonesia could do this. Something else I'm curious about is what effects we will see from the recent change in policy in Europe, which is busy increasing the local production of canola/rapeseed crops significantly and I suspect that will have some unintended consequences.
cbsks 7y ago
This is one of the most useless comparisons I have ever seen: "That’s an increase of the equivalent of roughly 36,000 Olympic sized swimming pools of carbon dioxide more per year." Why are we measuring gas inside of a pool? Is that a lot? or a little? I don't think I've ever even seen an Olympic sized swimming pool in person!
- lifeformed 7y ago
  And how does one visualize 36,000 of them??
  - cbsks 7y ago
    That part is easy. It's a cube with 33 pools on each side. Duh.
- cheese4242 7y ago
  At least they didn't measure it in football fields or distance to the moon.
- jml7c5 7y ago
  It's also incorrect: 36000 * 2500 m^3 * 2 kg/m^3 is only 180 Gg. I think they used the density of dry ice (1500kg/m^3) by mistake. Measuring in teragrams is also not very useful, as virtually all climate-related stats are reported in in tonnes of CO2 equivalent ("tCO2e", which ain't exactly proper SI unit formatting but is still widely used). 140 Tg of CO2e = 140 MtCO2e. World CO2e emissions are ~40 Gt/year, for reference.
Mikeb85 7y ago
The problem with palm oil is that it's an amazing product with amazing properties and is very efficient to produce but unfortunately is best produced in countries that have no qualms about razing their environment to produce it. We used to clear-cut entire forests in Canada (and still do some of that). We destroy eco-systems for oil production. Brazil razes the Amazon to produce beef and soy. Lots of countries engage in environmental destruction for the sake of the economy. Palm oil isn't particularly bad, it's just choices people make.
- fuzzfactor 7y ago
  In the US, palm oil is not a domestic oil, it's one that comes in chemical tankers. Petroleum & fuel tankers are too gross, those materials may be in the same terminal, but not the same ship as palm or tallow. And they don't need to fully remove every last bit of diesel after discharge for instance before loading gasoline. They fully clean out the heavy fuel and crude carriers far less often, compatibility is usually acceptable. Ship tanks are just challenging to get really clean, depending on what has been in them. Those developing plantations & ranches are in countries where they need our industrial chemicals, and we seem to consume their products in similar bulk. It could be considered an uneven exchange, but that's what intercontinental commerce has been for millennia. While shipbuilding has been largely motivated by profitmaking according to value differential, buyers and sellers are both making money so they're accordingly influential. These are the chemical ships where they have to clean out most compartments after cargo discharge anyway, so they can load something different for the departing voyage. Chief Mates love it after they have discharged things like Benzene or Methanol in developing countries because they leave the cargo compartments and maze of on-board pipes & valves cleaner than any intentional procedure. And pure chemicals like this just evaporate. They know they can load almost anything after that.
arminiusreturns 7y ago
I realized a few years when I started habitually reading ingredients lists that palm oil was showing up in more and more foods, but it wasn't till I correlated it with an upset stomach that I purposefully stopped buying food products with it. I've been trying to cut my sugar intake, so I don't get these anymore, but one major place you might notice a difference is if you use coffee creamer. Most of the cheaper ones have palm oil. The good ones don't, and the differences on the body are noticeable to me at least. Sometimes pragmatic choices can lead to ethical results.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 7y ago
> The Guardian interviewed 66-year-old oil palm farmer, Hussein Mohammad, who decried the EU’s choice to draw down their consumption of palm oil biofuels. He says, “I have spent all my money on the palm oil farm; I’ve recently planted new trees that will last for the next 25 years and my whole family relies on this. It’s how my kids afford to study.” I see the modern environmental movement as a continuation of western imperialism. The developed Western world especially Europe intensively developed their land and eradicated much of their wildlife, in the process of developing the richest civilization in the world. As a result, now the majority of undeveloped land and species lies in the developing world. The modern environmental movement seeks to limit how these countries can develop and what they can do with the natural resources of their countries by using Western social, diplomatic, and economic pressure on these developing countries.
- monadic2 7y ago
  > The modern environmental movement seeks to limit how these countries can develop and what they can do with the natural resources of their countries by using Western social, diplomatic, and economic pressure on these developing countries. To what end? I think I probably agree with you. I also see using traditionally imperial methods of interstate regulation as literally the only hope to slow global warming OR to decolonialize, so I’m not sure what your point is.
- pastor_elm 7y ago
  except deforestation is no longer a requirement for development and really hasn't been for 100 years. Look at Japan and South Korea (67.00% and 63.20% forestation respectively). Indonesia is already down to 46.46%. Go look at Brazil outside of the Amazon. Mostly deforested already for farmland and it hasn't really brought the country into the 1st world. Agrarian societies are a dead end for development.
  - RcouF1uZ4gsC 7y ago
    For Japan's case at least, it seems there was significant deforestation followed by reforestation. I think that was the case in the US as well. It seems that poor countries trash their environment to develop and become rich (see United Kingdom, United States, China). Once they are rich they start caring more about the environment and do things like reforestation and other more environmentally friendly actions. https://www.nippon.com/en/features/c03913/japan%E2%80%99s-forests-from-lumber-source-to-beloved-resource.html https://www.nippon.com/en/features/c03913/japan%E2%80%99s-fo...
101404 7y ago
Here in Europe, we destroyed our forests more than a millennium ago. Since then, we are profiting economically from all the agricultural land that destruction created. It made us rich. But we really don't like it when other people want to do the same! Solution? We should fill Europe again with thick forests. Not the groomed artificial woods we have now, that really only exist because we can sell the wood after 20 years. We should destroy all our agricultural land and convert it back to dark natural forests, full of large and dangerous animals. Why do we expect the Third World to have all the the economically useless forests?
- zahma 7y ago
  We know better now. In many places, the forests demolished for palm oil contain invaluable biodiversity. It's not that Europe shouldn't be reforested, but proper incentive structures have to be implemented to prevent further enclosure on vital ecosystems in less developed economies.
  - 101404 7y ago
    And yet, we spend all our time lecturing Third World countries and don't plant any real forests here. It's easy. Couple billion Euros and we replicated the entire Borneo/Kalimatan forest. THEN we can lecture others. Not before.
- gpderetta 7y ago
  Europe forests are growing again, both because of increased protection and reduction in farming. [1] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/07/forest-europe-environment/&sa=U&ved=2ahUKEwikhMiF6N7nAhVKecAKHa6GCEkQFjAAegQIDBAB&usg=AOvVaw3yoswzOjEDFhsM6gTrGZRL https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/07/forest-europe-environ...
  - 101404 7y ago
    > "Sorry, but we can’t find the page you were looking for"
    - 7y ago
INTPenis 7y ago
A lot of brands in Sweden started advertising "no palm oil" a couple years ago. Now it seems they replaced it with shea oil in some cases. Is that any better? I feel like the food industry is always in a race with ethics to find the cheapest process.
nimbius 7y ago
>The (not so) sustainable biofuels I remember reading some time ago about palm oil converted to biodiesel and immediately became suspicious of the final product as anything but a chance to push the sale of palm oil. soft oils like canola/linseed, and corn are suited best for biodiesel as their final product is at a much lower gel point than coconut or palm. To run a diesel safely at anything but sub-tropic temperatures with a minimum of waxing or smoking, you'd need gallons of stabilizers and modifiers in the mix. the place I remember hearing this being used was Indonesia, and only at around 50% for a passenger rail line. This makes sense as its partially using petrochemical diesel as a cheap additive for gel and flow stability. the UK and EU could improve their biodiesel uptake with better recycling practices. most of east europe is awash in high quality sunflower oil for frying and cooking, and could easily see this waste oil converted.
kitd 7y ago
It's disappointing that such an article doesn't even mention the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil [1] that is set up to address exactly these problems. It's early days but you can look out for their logo on packaging. [1] https://rspo.org/ https://rspo.org/
howling 7y ago
The article (as many others) fails to address the single most important question in the palm oil debate. What alternatives are there if we are to avoid palm oil? How are they more environmentally friendly?
- jamil7 7y ago
  There probably isn't a single alternative since I think thats part of the problem here, it's a become a monoculture. Practically speaking though it can be replaced with various nut or vegetable oils, which of those are most environmentally friendly depend on the location and farming methods.
- gitgreen 7y ago
  Algal oil is a potential substitute. There was a laundry detergent manufactured from algal oil instead of palm oil however there was pushback from consumers because the algae were genetically modified. https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/sep/29/algae-yeast-quest-to-find-alternative-to-palm-oil https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/sep/29... Scaling algal oil production is a problem that is currently being worked on.
- howlin 7y ago
  Palm oil effectively replaced partially hydrogenated oils in various junk foods when we learned how unhealthy trans fats were. Fully hydrogenating these oils will not have exactly the same properties as partial hydrogenation, but for many purposes it will work ok in many of these junk food applications. Fully hydrogenated oils don't have the trans fat issue, but it will require consumer education to make this point clear.
- DoreenMichele 7y ago
  What alternatives are there if we are to avoid palm oil? How are they more environmentally friendly? With palm oil being used for biofuel, one way to cut back on it is cut back on energy consumption. Promote passive solar design. Promote walkable, transit oriented planning. Develop better public transit. Tax the absolute hell out of private vehicle ownership. Etc.
wedn3sday 7y ago
I really feel like the solution here has nothing to do with Palm oil, or any other specific commodity. The solution is for rich countries to pay people in poor countries to take care of their forests. If the market value of a healthy forest is greater then that of palm oil, the forest will survive. If the inverse is true, the forest will be destroyed. If we want people in less developed countries to not exploit their natural resources, we're going to have to pay them more then they could get otherwise, or the resources will be extracted and sold.
- chrisseaton 7y ago
  We already pay a lot of people in the west to maintain land for ecological reasons, such as farmers, so it's not an unusual thing to do.
  - roel_v 7y ago
    And it's mostly not working (see today's EC reports on farmer subsidies for nature preservation). Spoiler: the money is spend and happily pocketed by the target audience, who then find ways to do the other economically profitable thing as well.
    - chrisseaton 7y ago
      > it's mostly not working...: the money is spend and happily pocketed by the target audience, who then find ways to do the other economically profitable thing as well. err... isn't that the intended outcome? The money is getting to who we wanted it to get to and it's not stopping them running their businesses and creating value. That's all good isn't it? We'd love to be able to pay people in the Amazon to protect the forests and still develop themselves economically.
      - roel_v 7y ago
        Not by having them do the exact thing we pay them not to do. In the EC case, we pay them to develop bird habitat, yet that habitat doesn't get developed. If we'd pay people to not grow palm trees, we expect that there isn't some metric loophole like that makes it so that we don't achieve the goals set out. I mean, it's a matter of clearly defining goals and KPIs of course, but that's easier said than done.
m3kw9 7y ago
Or oil on your palm.
aaron695 7y ago
This article has not talked about the "The Problem with Palm Oil" So why does it get upvoted? To virtual signal? Because it's easier to up-vote than think? The religion of simple minded environmentalism has put a fatwa on Palm Oil? Because if we state the problem we might have to solve it, so better not to talk about it? If there is a problem explain it. I'll sum it up in part for you - "Poor people need money so their kids don't die, rich people like forests and random stuff more than dirty funny colored kids so pretend boycotting Palm Oil makes a difference because they still get stuff and the worse that happens is some random kids die"
DoreenMichele 7y ago
The world does not have to run this way. We can make other choices. Part of the solution could be: Walkable "first world" cities. Better public transit. Passive solar design. A less is more ethos in developed countries. Actively valuing and protecting small businesses rather than crushing them under our boot in our rush to cater to big business.
justlexi93 7y ago
he World Wildlife Fund writes "The (palm oil) industry is linked to major issues such as deforestation, habitat degradation, climate change, animal cruelty, and indigenous rights abuses in the countries where it is produced.
anonsivalley652 7y ago
It might be tokenism or spitting into the wind, but I've avoid palm oil as much as possible for going on 8 years. I read ingredients before purchasing and resist the urge to shop unthinkingly. Another thing is to research corporations who own particular brands such as this free sample of just some of the villains on supermarket shelves: - ConAgra (which owns Angie's) - KraftHeinz (one of the worst companies to work for) - Sabra (supports occupation of Palestine) - MillerCoors (including Blue Moon) Buy local from independent shops where and when you can. The diffuse, Tragedy of the Commons of demand leads to circumstances in other parts of the world, be it cash crops for food or for drugs (and sometimes food is the drug).
JackPoach 7y ago
Palm oil is a convenient scape goat.

270 points by hispanic 7y ago

I've said this before, and I'll say it again: Palm oil is the most efficient oil to extract by practically a factor of 2 [1]. So in the long term, if global supply increases or stays stable, if we replace palm oil crops with another crop, eventually we'll make the problem worse and face more deforestation. [1] according to this http://journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_yield.html http://journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_yield.html I wish the article would go more in depth into what it would take: >Because when done right, oil palms can yield the highest amount of oil per acre of land, and if Western countries drastically decrease their demand for palm oil, that could bring a harsh disaster for many now reliant on a Western thirst for the oil.

Gravityloss 7y ago
Your comment has a lot of assumptions. For example if the choice is between a palm oil biodiesel powered car or an electric one, it makes a difference.
- matthewaveryusa 7y ago
  Exactly, the focus should be on reducing consumption which, like you mentioned, comes down to consumer choice and policy. less biodiesel cars means less demand means less deforestation. Thing is, everything has palm oil in it, so reducing global palm oil demand is akin to reducing global consumption of goods.
  - throwbackThurs 7y ago
    I think we need to change consumer expectation about the products we use. Most of them don't need palm oil at all.
  - SamBam 7y ago
    > Thing is, everything has palm oil in it I feel like this is unnecessarily hyperbolic, unless I'm ignorant about the true spread of palm oil in "everything." This site [1] says that 72% of palm oil is used for food stuffs, all processed foods, which anyone can eat less of. Most of the remainder is in soap products. That doesn't sound like "everything" to me. 1. https://www.palmoilinvestigations.org/about-palm-oil.html https://www.palmoilinvestigations.org/about-palm-oil.html
  - adrianN 7y ago
    The only product I consume (occasionally) that has palm oil in it is soup concentrate. The trick is not buying processed food.
- scythe 7y ago
  Even ignoring biodiesel, vegetable oils are in high demand for lubrication, and electric motors use less. Hopefully the switch away from heat engines will decrease overall demand for lubricants and reduce industrial vegetable oil consumption.
Robotbeat 7y ago
Reminds me of the Jevons Paradox. It's so efficient to produce that it's worth blanketing whole tropics in palm oil plantations to maximize the economic productivity of developing countries... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox (I'm not a huge fan of biofuels for this reason.)

clSTophEjUdRanu 7y ago

Why is it on me, the consumer, to worry about unethical palm oil sourcing?

Gravityloss 7y ago
Because lawmakers, trading blocks and international societies have failed to do a good enough job about it.
tenebrisalietum 7y ago
um, because you buy it, you're a typical price-sensitive non-1%er and companies produce it in response to your demand?
- lowtto 7y ago
  how the hell do you not buy palm oil?
  - kazagistar 7y ago
    This. It's almost impossible to source anything without it.
    - ses1984 7y ago
      Buy whole fresh foods instead of prepared food. Buy less candy and cookies.
      - blackandblue 7y ago
        all this got me curious and looked it up. here are a few things that often contain palm oil: bread, margarine, some cheese, ice cream, soap & shampoo, chocolate, pre-made pizza etc. looks to me like you might want to go back to making everything yourself or know every single brand around...
        7y ago

lowtto 7y ago

> environmental health and the well-being of poor and marginalized communities in pursuit of profits Heh. Isn't that too dramatic. So SEA countries are suppose to sit down and not able to sell anything? How bad is this too bad of a situation? The article failed to highlight this. To me it feels like someone just doesn't like someone else getting too much money at selling palm oil for some reason. I wonder which other industry that benefits from boycotting palm oil.

mc32 7y ago
It sounds a lot like politics. They’re against something but provide no suitable alternatives. Even if they provided an acceptable alternative to them, someone else would pipe up and mention a lot of problems with the alternative. On the end we’re supposed to somehow achieve the impossible. These things are lose-lose. The only real answer is to lower ave standard of living (in other words a western lifestyle needs to be recalibrated downward) and to lower total population via slowed growth -at least in high growth areas... but none of that is palatable to anyone.
- christiansakai 7y ago
  I like the idea of lowering standard of living. Can you give me some examples?
  - arrosenberg 7y ago
    Carbon-positive ways we could lower SoL: no more individual vehicles, no more single family housing, massive increase in taxes on electronics and fuels.
  - mc32 7y ago
    Probably something akin to the ex-Yugoslavia with less repression. Though I suspect some repression would be necessary to achieve that. I don’t say that in a positive way —but I don’t think people would volunteer for such a state.
- TOGoS 7y ago

femiagbabiaka 7y ago

This hits well on my biggest problem with a lot of liberal solutions to climate change: not enough systems thinking. In Europe and elsewhere, politicians got to celebrate the adoption of biofuel, and now they also get to be righteous about banning it. Given how terrible almond production is for the environment as well, I could see a similar move being made there. Who is responsible for evaluating risk in these situations? Who is modeling effects on our ecosystem when they promote $SOLUTION as panacea?

cjblomqvist 7y ago
Couldn't agree more. That's why simple policies which do not dabble into the how, just the end effect, typically works better (sorry for no references, but AFAIK from my Master's on the subject it's pretty well established). That's why carbon tax (especially a global one) is such an attractive policy. Of course, there are issues with that as well, but generally it'll probably (and seems to) have the largest and best effect long term.
- kazagistar 7y ago
  Only if the carbon tax is applied retroactively, with interest, to make up for the dramatic economic inequality generated by countries who already got ahead economically by wrecking the atmosphere. Otherwise, it's just another way developed countries are using to keep themselves ahead of the rest of the world artificially with inhumane international policy.
  - ars 7y ago
    If you're going to do that, you'll also have to figure out a way to "charge" less developed countries for all the technology the developed countries invented. Like the cell phone: Developing countries never bothered with phone wires, they went straight to cell phones. Obviously I think both ideas are bad, but if you're going to advocate for your idea, you need to include everything.
  - aaronblohowiak 7y ago
    Baloney. If your line of reasoning held, Venezuela would be in a great place. Obviously, the differences between countries of various levels of economic development go far beyond who can put the most co2 in the air. Additionally, we are already seeing renewables become cheaper than fossil fuels. A great outcome would be leapfrogging - just like with cell phones vs landlines.

tengbretson 7y ago

Are problems like this an inevitability of international trade among economically unequal parties? If one party offers N dollars per ounce of palm oil, and the other party desperately needs money more than anything else, how could you expect anything less than the most desperate of measures taken to produce as much palm oil as possible? What are our options? No trade among economically disadvantaged countries at all? Devalue our currency? Paternalistic oversight?

nickik 7y ago
Countries very often also keep exporting when its not 'unequal'. While richer countries tend to have better environmental policy, that can also go in the other direction sometimes.
ipnon 7y ago
When international trade consists only of material and not migrants Mass wealth can only be generated in advanced economies. For the people of developing countries to benefit their countries must participate somehow in these advanced economies. With globalization they are allowed to participate only by the exchange of goods (either selling manufacturing in developed countries like China or natural resources in undeveloped countries like Congo). Before globalization, they could not participate at all. Advanced economies like the US and EU allow immigration only in a limited capacity, and they do so in way that benefits mainly the investor class, entrepreneurs and high-skill workers. Consider the typical Silicon Valley visa, the H1-B. The H1-B only allows corporations to sponsor highly-skilled workers to take jobs that are hard to fill with Americans. Think software engineers working at Google. This kind of immigration benefits investors in Google and workers in the software industry while increasing competition for Americans in the market for high paying jobs. Excluded from all of this especially are low-skill foreign workers. Everyone wants to be rich, and they will not stop this pursuit. As long as the majority of people in this world, those who are living in non-advanced economies, can only become rich by the selling of manufacturing and natural resources instead of their labor, then there will always be billions of people whose work effects the planet's environment in a significantly damaging way.
- 7y ago

robgibbons 7y ago

As a soapmaker, I used beef tallow as a primary ingredient for a long time. More recently, trying not to use animal-derived products led me to try palm oil, as it's a nearly perfect substitute for tallow. The properties of palm oil are ideal for soapmaking, as well as many other products. Palm oil is one of those wonder ingredients that are useful in so many ways, and I truly hope we can find a way to make its cultivation more sustainable. For now, it's most important to know where your ingredients are sourced and the local impacts of harvesting them.

Robotbeat 7y ago
What about hydrogenated vegetable oil?
- robgibbons 7y ago
  It's certainly used in soap, but I've never tried it. From what I understand it's often derived from soybean oil. Each type of oil/fat has a unique fatty acid profile that contributes different qualities to the product after saponification. Palm oil has a uniquely high palmitic and oleic acid content, both of which provide very desirable qualities to the end product.
  - fuzzfactor 7y ago
    Raw agricultural oils have a limited number of unsaturated chemical bonds between some of the atoms in their carbon chain structure. These carbons are available for reaction with alkalies such as lye, which saponifiy each pair of target carbons by adding a molecule of water H_O_H. H_ to one carbon, _OH to the adjoining carbon. The properties of the resulting material, soap, are not very similar to the original oil, it is quite water soluble by comparison, and capable of easily emulsifying regular oil & grease as expected for water rinsability. If the raw oil is instead reacted with hydrogen gas, one _H goes to each reactive carbon and the molecule after that point is referred to as being saturated with hydrogen. That's why they call it hydrogenated vegetable oil. Things like Crisco which are solid at room temperature and able to cook at high heat because they are hydrogenated, even though the raw oil they are made from is light and does not even solidify under refrigeration. The lye is not very reactive with vegetable oil that is already saturated (plain mineral oil is saturated naturally). The heavier fractions or varieties of palm oils can be solids at various room temperatures, and under refigeration the heavier waxes from olive oil often separate from the lighter fractions readily. But both of these waxy fractions are solid naturally just because they have a higher melting point, there has been no hydrogenation and the raw solid oil when melted can be reacted with lye as fully as raw light fractions can.

thehappypm 7y ago

I've been to Malaysia and seen this. It's interesting -- just row after row after row of palm trees. Otherwise it would all be jungle, but are jungles useful for local Malaysians? They're full of mosquitos and too dense to even really walk through.

lm28469 7y ago
They're probably useful in long term and not so obvious ways we won't figure out until it's too late.
ascotan 7y ago
Rainforests not jungles. Gotta talk the talk.
- thehappypm 7y ago
  The people in Malaysia who I talked to used the word jungle.
  - mythrwy 7y ago
    I think poster means "saving the Jungle!" just doesn't have same appeal as "saving the Rainforest!"
hef19898 7y ago
I would assume there are ways to make palm plantations sustainable. I mean the German word "Nachhaltigkeit" comes from old treaties on forest cultivation, planting and harvesting in a way that keeps the overall forest intact. Seems we all forgot to care about the aspect quite a while ago.
notahacker 7y ago
The average Malaysian lives in a city and isn't greatly affected by jungles either way. There are small numbers Malaysians who live off the jungle and others who work in jungle tourism and conservation too. And other Malaysians who work on palm oil plantations, of course. The jungle's considerably more useful than palm plantations for the animals that live there, obviously.

SubiculumCode 7y ago

SubiculumCode 7y ago
My apologies. There was a posting snafu, and all that came out was an I.

ajna91 7y ago

To put a face on the problem, this video of an orangutan fighting to remain in its home while the forest is logged out from under it is powerful. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihPfB30YT_c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihPfB30YT_c

gdubs 7y ago
Attenborough’s recent film “Our Planet” had an episode dedicated to Palm Oil monocultures and the displaced and dying orangutan. Heartbreaking. Good series if you haven’t seen it.

SubiculumCode 7y ago

In terms of climate change, palm oil seems to be a really really bad substitute for other oils. I'd support increased tariffs on palm oil, and moneys to subsidize keeping rain forest.

vsyu 7y ago
Yeah, I had heard palm oil isn't the healthiest for you but didn't realize that it had so many environmental implications as well...

frandroid 7y ago

> 92 to 184 teragrams of carbon dioxide Usually emissions of CO2 are measured in tons... This is a sneaky measurement change. wtf is a teragram? Okay, turns out it's a million tons, or as we used to call it, a megatonne. WHYYY

Mirioron 7y ago
Because grams, kilograms, megagrams, gigagrams, teragrams, petagrams, exagrams etc.

kokey 7y ago

It's refreshing to see an article actually pointing biofuels policy being the dominant driver of palm oil related deforestation. If I remember right another problem is that India was expected to become a big palm oil producer where they are historically one of the biggest palm oil importers. This unfortunately didn't happen, somehow the upfront cost and time to production was something that was somehow difficult in India where Malaysia and Indonesia could do this. Something else I'm curious about is what effects we will see from the recent change in policy in Europe, which is busy increasing the local production of canola/rapeseed crops significantly and I suspect that will have some unintended consequences.

cbsks 7y ago

This is one of the most useless comparisons I have ever seen: "That’s an increase of the equivalent of roughly 36,000 Olympic sized swimming pools of carbon dioxide more per year." Why are we measuring gas inside of a pool? Is that a lot? or a little? I don't think I've ever even seen an Olympic sized swimming pool in person!

lifeformed 7y ago
And how does one visualize 36,000 of them??
- cbsks 7y ago
  That part is easy. It's a cube with 33 pools on each side. Duh.
cheese4242 7y ago
At least they didn't measure it in football fields or distance to the moon.
jml7c5 7y ago
It's also incorrect: 36000 * 2500 m^3 * 2 kg/m^3 is only 180 Gg. I think they used the density of dry ice (1500kg/m^3) by mistake. Measuring in teragrams is also not very useful, as virtually all climate-related stats are reported in in tonnes of CO2 equivalent ("tCO2e", which ain't exactly proper SI unit formatting but is still widely used). 140 Tg of CO2e = 140 MtCO2e. World CO2e emissions are ~40 Gt/year, for reference.

Mikeb85 7y ago

The problem with palm oil is that it's an amazing product with amazing properties and is very efficient to produce but unfortunately is best produced in countries that have no qualms about razing their environment to produce it. We used to clear-cut entire forests in Canada (and still do some of that). We destroy eco-systems for oil production. Brazil razes the Amazon to produce beef and soy. Lots of countries engage in environmental destruction for the sake of the economy. Palm oil isn't particularly bad, it's just choices people make.

fuzzfactor 7y ago
In the US, palm oil is not a domestic oil, it's one that comes in chemical tankers. Petroleum & fuel tankers are too gross, those materials may be in the same terminal, but not the same ship as palm or tallow. And they don't need to fully remove every last bit of diesel after discharge for instance before loading gasoline. They fully clean out the heavy fuel and crude carriers far less often, compatibility is usually acceptable. Ship tanks are just challenging to get really clean, depending on what has been in them. Those developing plantations & ranches are in countries where they need our industrial chemicals, and we seem to consume their products in similar bulk. It could be considered an uneven exchange, but that's what intercontinental commerce has been for millennia. While shipbuilding has been largely motivated by profitmaking according to value differential, buyers and sellers are both making money so they're accordingly influential. These are the chemical ships where they have to clean out most compartments after cargo discharge anyway, so they can load something different for the departing voyage. Chief Mates love it after they have discharged things like Benzene or Methanol in developing countries because they leave the cargo compartments and maze of on-board pipes & valves cleaner than any intentional procedure. And pure chemicals like this just evaporate. They know they can load almost anything after that.

arminiusreturns 7y ago

I realized a few years when I started habitually reading ingredients lists that palm oil was showing up in more and more foods, but it wasn't till I correlated it with an upset stomach that I purposefully stopped buying food products with it. I've been trying to cut my sugar intake, so I don't get these anymore, but one major place you might notice a difference is if you use coffee creamer. Most of the cheaper ones have palm oil. The good ones don't, and the differences on the body are noticeable to me at least. Sometimes pragmatic choices can lead to ethical results.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 7y ago

> The Guardian interviewed 66-year-old oil palm farmer, Hussein Mohammad, who decried the EU’s choice to draw down their consumption of palm oil biofuels. He says, “I have spent all my money on the palm oil farm; I’ve recently planted new trees that will last for the next 25 years and my whole family relies on this. It’s how my kids afford to study.” I see the modern environmental movement as a continuation of western imperialism. The developed Western world especially Europe intensively developed their land and eradicated much of their wildlife, in the process of developing the richest civilization in the world. As a result, now the majority of undeveloped land and species lies in the developing world. The modern environmental movement seeks to limit how these countries can develop and what they can do with the natural resources of their countries by using Western social, diplomatic, and economic pressure on these developing countries.

monadic2 7y ago
> The modern environmental movement seeks to limit how these countries can develop and what they can do with the natural resources of their countries by using Western social, diplomatic, and economic pressure on these developing countries. To what end? I think I probably agree with you. I also see using traditionally imperial methods of interstate regulation as literally the only hope to slow global warming OR to decolonialize, so I’m not sure what your point is.
pastor_elm 7y ago
except deforestation is no longer a requirement for development and really hasn't been for 100 years. Look at Japan and South Korea (67.00% and 63.20% forestation respectively). Indonesia is already down to 46.46%. Go look at Brazil outside of the Amazon. Mostly deforested already for farmland and it hasn't really brought the country into the 1st world. Agrarian societies are a dead end for development.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 7y ago
  For Japan's case at least, it seems there was significant deforestation followed by reforestation. I think that was the case in the US as well. It seems that poor countries trash their environment to develop and become rich (see United Kingdom, United States, China). Once they are rich they start caring more about the environment and do things like reforestation and other more environmentally friendly actions. https://www.nippon.com/en/features/c03913/japan%E2%80%99s-forests-from-lumber-source-to-beloved-resource.html https://www.nippon.com/en/features/c03913/japan%E2%80%99s-fo...

101404 7y ago

Here in Europe, we destroyed our forests more than a millennium ago. Since then, we are profiting economically from all the agricultural land that destruction created. It made us rich. But we really don't like it when other people want to do the same! Solution? We should fill Europe again with thick forests. Not the groomed artificial woods we have now, that really only exist because we can sell the wood after 20 years. We should destroy all our agricultural land and convert it back to dark natural forests, full of large and dangerous animals. Why do we expect the Third World to have all the the economically useless forests?

zahma 7y ago
We know better now. In many places, the forests demolished for palm oil contain invaluable biodiversity. It's not that Europe shouldn't be reforested, but proper incentive structures have to be implemented to prevent further enclosure on vital ecosystems in less developed economies.
- 101404 7y ago
  And yet, we spend all our time lecturing Third World countries and don't plant any real forests here. It's easy. Couple billion Euros and we replicated the entire Borneo/Kalimatan forest. THEN we can lecture others. Not before.
gpderetta 7y ago
Europe forests are growing again, both because of increased protection and reduction in farming. [1] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/07/forest-europe-environment/&sa=U&ved=2ahUKEwikhMiF6N7nAhVKecAKHa6GCEkQFjAAegQIDBAB&usg=AOvVaw3yoswzOjEDFhsM6gTrGZRL https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/07/forest-europe-environ...
- 101404 7y ago
  > "Sorry, but we can’t find the page you were looking for"
  - 7y ago

INTPenis 7y ago

A lot of brands in Sweden started advertising "no palm oil" a couple years ago. Now it seems they replaced it with shea oil in some cases. Is that any better? I feel like the food industry is always in a race with ethics to find the cheapest process.

nimbius 7y ago

>The (not so) sustainable biofuels I remember reading some time ago about palm oil converted to biodiesel and immediately became suspicious of the final product as anything but a chance to push the sale of palm oil. soft oils like canola/linseed, and corn are suited best for biodiesel as their final product is at a much lower gel point than coconut or palm. To run a diesel safely at anything but sub-tropic temperatures with a minimum of waxing or smoking, you'd need gallons of stabilizers and modifiers in the mix. the place I remember hearing this being used was Indonesia, and only at around 50% for a passenger rail line. This makes sense as its partially using petrochemical diesel as a cheap additive for gel and flow stability. the UK and EU could improve their biodiesel uptake with better recycling practices. most of east europe is awash in high quality sunflower oil for frying and cooking, and could easily see this waste oil converted.

kitd 7y ago

It's disappointing that such an article doesn't even mention the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil [1] that is set up to address exactly these problems. It's early days but you can look out for their logo on packaging. [1] https://rspo.org/ https://rspo.org/

howling 7y ago

The article (as many others) fails to address the single most important question in the palm oil debate. What alternatives are there if we are to avoid palm oil? How are they more environmentally friendly?

jamil7 7y ago
There probably isn't a single alternative since I think thats part of the problem here, it's a become a monoculture. Practically speaking though it can be replaced with various nut or vegetable oils, which of those are most environmentally friendly depend on the location and farming methods.
gitgreen 7y ago
Algal oil is a potential substitute. There was a laundry detergent manufactured from algal oil instead of palm oil however there was pushback from consumers because the algae were genetically modified. https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/sep/29/algae-yeast-quest-to-find-alternative-to-palm-oil https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/sep/29... Scaling algal oil production is a problem that is currently being worked on.
howlin 7y ago
Palm oil effectively replaced partially hydrogenated oils in various junk foods when we learned how unhealthy trans fats were. Fully hydrogenating these oils will not have exactly the same properties as partial hydrogenation, but for many purposes it will work ok in many of these junk food applications. Fully hydrogenated oils don't have the trans fat issue, but it will require consumer education to make this point clear.
DoreenMichele 7y ago
What alternatives are there if we are to avoid palm oil? How are they more environmentally friendly? With palm oil being used for biofuel, one way to cut back on it is cut back on energy consumption. Promote passive solar design. Promote walkable, transit oriented planning. Develop better public transit. Tax the absolute hell out of private vehicle ownership. Etc.

wedn3sday 7y ago

I really feel like the solution here has nothing to do with Palm oil, or any other specific commodity. The solution is for rich countries to pay people in poor countries to take care of their forests. If the market value of a healthy forest is greater then that of palm oil, the forest will survive. If the inverse is true, the forest will be destroyed. If we want people in less developed countries to not exploit their natural resources, we're going to have to pay them more then they could get otherwise, or the resources will be extracted and sold.

chrisseaton 7y ago
We already pay a lot of people in the west to maintain land for ecological reasons, such as farmers, so it's not an unusual thing to do.
- roel_v 7y ago
  And it's mostly not working (see today's EC reports on farmer subsidies for nature preservation). Spoiler: the money is spend and happily pocketed by the target audience, who then find ways to do the other economically profitable thing as well.
  - chrisseaton 7y ago
    > it's mostly not working...: the money is spend and happily pocketed by the target audience, who then find ways to do the other economically profitable thing as well. err... isn't that the intended outcome? The money is getting to who we wanted it to get to and it's not stopping them running their businesses and creating value. That's all good isn't it? We'd love to be able to pay people in the Amazon to protect the forests and still develop themselves economically.
    - roel_v 7y ago
      Not by having them do the exact thing we pay them not to do. In the EC case, we pay them to develop bird habitat, yet that habitat doesn't get developed. If we'd pay people to not grow palm trees, we expect that there isn't some metric loophole like that makes it so that we don't achieve the goals set out. I mean, it's a matter of clearly defining goals and KPIs of course, but that's easier said than done.

m3kw9 7y ago

Or oil on your palm.

aaron695 7y ago

This article has not talked about the "The Problem with Palm Oil" So why does it get upvoted? To virtual signal? Because it's easier to up-vote than think? The religion of simple minded environmentalism has put a fatwa on Palm Oil? Because if we state the problem we might have to solve it, so better not to talk about it? If there is a problem explain it. I'll sum it up in part for you - "Poor people need money so their kids don't die, rich people like forests and random stuff more than dirty funny colored kids so pretend boycotting Palm Oil makes a difference because they still get stuff and the worse that happens is some random kids die"

DoreenMichele 7y ago

The world does not have to run this way. We can make other choices. Part of the solution could be: Walkable "first world" cities. Better public transit. Passive solar design. A less is more ethos in developed countries. Actively valuing and protecting small businesses rather than crushing them under our boot in our rush to cater to big business.

justlexi93 7y ago

he World Wildlife Fund writes "The (palm oil) industry is linked to major issues such as deforestation, habitat degradation, climate change, animal cruelty, and indigenous rights abuses in the countries where it is produced.

anonsivalley652 7y ago

It might be tokenism or spitting into the wind, but I've avoid palm oil as much as possible for going on 8 years. I read ingredients before purchasing and resist the urge to shop unthinkingly. Another thing is to research corporations who own particular brands such as this free sample of just some of the villains on supermarket shelves: - ConAgra (which owns Angie's) - KraftHeinz (one of the worst companies to work for) - Sabra (supports occupation of Palestine) - MillerCoors (including Blue Moon) Buy local from independent shops where and when you can. The diffuse, Tragedy of the Commons of demand leads to circumstances in other parts of the world, be it cash crops for food or for drugs (and sometimes food is the drug).

JackPoach 7y ago

Palm oil is a convenient scape goat.