There is no denying that palm oil gets a bad wrap nowadays. We hear about deforestation, large CO2 emissions and most notably wildlife losing their habitats. So is it all bad, can it be good and how can we manage the use of it? Below is a very brief account of the situation.
The Bad
Let's start of by agreeing that lots of bad things have happened in the palm oil industry. The cheapness of which it can be produced drove our desire to use it in more things, which then caused lots of farmers and corporations to make bad decisions with respect to the environment and people. More palm oil production means more land needs to be prepared for new trees to be planted, which means forests get cleared in the locations where palm trees grow well. Not only do animals lose their habitats, but massive amounts of CO2 are released into the atmosphere from heavy machinery and the forest vegetation (peat land) itself.
The Good
So the above paragraph is pretty daunting on just how bad the production of palm oil can be. But when you delve into other vegetable oils and how they are produced, there is some good in palm oil production. For example, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has reported that increasing the production of other vegetable oils may lead to greater environmental harm, given the relative efficiency palm oil production maintains over other oils. Soy Bean oil is heavily produced in places like Brazil and Argentina, which is seeing bird biodiversity impacted by producing this crop. Increasing other oil production given the greater land mass required to grow other oil crops may therefore be worse.
Source: "Oil Palm and Biodiversity : A situation analysis by the IUCN Oil Palm Task Force" published in 2018, authored by Meijaard, Erik, Garcia-Ulloa, John, Sheil Douglas, Wich Serge A., Carlson, K.M., Juffe-Bignoli, Diego and Brooks, Thomas M.
Managing Our Use
Here at Samarem, we are conscious about our environmental impact on the planet. Whilst eliminating the use of palm oil in our soaps is possible by increasing other hard oils and butters to make up the deficit, palm oil makes a wonderful hard, stable and balanced bar of soap. We feel that our usage rate of less than 25% of the oils used in our soaps together with the insistence on only using palm oil that is sourced from producers adhering to the Roundtable of Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) is a responsible use of this precious resource.
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