What is palm oil?
Palm oil is an edible vegetable oil derived from oil palm trees. Palm oil plantations are found in Southeast Asia, Africa and South America. Indonesia and Malaysia are the biggest producers of palm oil.
Oil palm crop is highly efficient and requires relatively little land. Palm oil is cheap, it has versatile qualities and many uses. Today it is the most widely consumed vegetable oil on the planet.
What are its uses?
Palm oil is mainly used in the food industry. It is found in many packaged products such as cakes, cookies, ice creams, margarine, packaged bread, pizza dough, cereals. It is estimated that more than 50% of all packaged products in a supermarket contain palm oil.
Palm oil is used in cosmetics and personal care products and also in cleaning products and biofuel.
Which beauty products contain palm oil?
Palm oil is used in lipsticks, mascaras, hair products, lotions, shower gels, face creams, deodorants, lip balms, soaps and many more. It is estimated that 7 out of 10 beauty and personal care products contain palm oil.
Palm oil is rich in fatty acids and vitamins A and E, it has many benefits for the skin and the hair and properties that make it ideal for use in beauty products. It retains moisture, adds thickness, increases foaming, makes products creamy, it is extra emollient and improves shelf life.
What is the problem with palm oil in the beauty industry?
Palm oil is cheap and has numerous uses and properties, resulting to a huge demand. In order to find more land for the oil palm plantations, producers and farmers destroy tropical forests by burning them down. This massive deforestation has a great impact on the environment. Forests absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and their destruction contributes to global warming. Additionally when massive areas of forests are burned down, huge amounts of carbon are emitted into the atmosphere.
Massive deforestation has a destructive impact on the wildlife as well. Many animals that live in these tropical forests are not able to find food anymore and are being very often captured and killed. Species that include orangutans, pygmy elephants, Sumatran tigers and rhinos are endangered because of the oil palm plantations.
The production of palm oil has a negative impact on local communities as well. The pollution caused by the fires results in serious health problems and sometimes even death. Indigenous groups lose their land and are forced to leave the area and their home. The working conditions in the plantations are not safe, salaries are extremely low and unfortunately child labor is involved.
What is sustainable palm oil?
In 2004 The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) was established. Its main goal is to promote the use of sustainable palm oil products. Sustainable palm oil is the palm oil produced in an eco-friendly and ethical way. Meaning that during the procedure no deforestation, forest burning, animal killing or exploitation of local people took place. Products that contain sustainable palm oil can get a certification to validate none of these tactics took place.
Although sustainable palm oil seems to be the solution, only 20% of the palm oil produced today is certified sustainable. In addition, RSPO (provides certifications) has been criticized for not being able to prevent deforestation, animal abuse and exploitation of local communities.
Another thought is to boycott palm oil and stop using beauty products that contain it (no matter if sustainable or not). Unfortunately boycotting palm oil would most probably increase deforestation.
Palm oil is a very efficient crop and produces more oil per area than any other known vegetable oil crop. If we boycott palm oil, we will have to replace it with another, (for example coconut oil) and that means larger areas will have to be burned down for the new plantations.
Last thoughts
The palm oil debate goes on for many years and is a very complex problem. The aim of this article was to highlight the basic issues of this debate and certainly not to provide easy answers.
We believe that as consumers we should all be informed on environmental matters and make more conscious choices.
