By now everybody should know that palm oil is one of the worst ingredients. Sadly it’s found in so many things that it can be extremely hard to avoid, especially when it’s not always clearly labelled. But why is it used in so many things, are there any good alternatives and is sustainable palm oil the way forward?
What is Palm Oil?
“Palm oil is an edible vegetable oil derived from the mesocarp (reddish pulp) of the fruit of the oil palms, primarily the African oil palm Elaeis guineensis, and to a lesser extent from the American oil palm Elaeis oleifera and the maripa palm Attalea maripa.” – source
What Products Is It Found In?
Around 50 percent of the goods used every day contain it. It can be found in products such as:
- Bread
- Make-up
- Toothpaste
- Deodorant
- Shampoo
- Soap
- Detergent
- Lipstick
- Margarine
- Chocolate
- Biscuits
- Ice Cream
- Pizza Dough
- Instant Noodles
- Biodiesel
How Can You Tell If Palm Oil Is Present?
It would be great if an ingredients list just said it was one of the ingredients, but it’s often a bit more complicated than that. Although you will sometimes see that a product clearly contains palm oil, more often than not an alternative, sometimes similar, name will be used:
Definitely derived from palm oil:
- Palm Kernel
- Palm Oil Kernel
- Palm Fruit Oil
- Palmate
- Palmitate
- Palmolein
- Palmitic Acid
- Palm Stearine
- Palmitoyl oxostearamide
- Palmitoyl tetrapeptide3
- Hyrated Palm Glycerides
- Cetyl Palmitate
- Octyl Palmitate
- Palmityl Alchohol
- Sodium Palm Kernelate
- Glyceryl Stearate
- Stearic Acid
- Elaeis Guineensis
- Sodium Kernelate
The last four on this list are the most concerning to me, because how on earth are we supposed to know?
Could be derived from palm oil or coconut oil:
- Sodium Laureth Sulfate (in almost everything that foams)
- Sodium Lauryl Sulfate
- Sodium Dodecyl Sulphate (SDS or NaDS)
- Cetyl Alcohol
- Sodium Isostearoyl Lactylaye
- Sodium Lauryl Sulfoacetate
Most likely derived from palm oil but could be derived from another vegetable oil:
- Steareth 2
- Steareth 20
- Sodium Lauryl Lactylate/Sulphate
- Vegetable Oil
- Vegetable Fat
This is an excellent downloadable PDF I found which lists the companies who do and don’t use palm oil in their products. It’s from 2012 so may be out of date, but it’s a good starting point.
Get an app from the Orangutan Foundation for your phone so you can easily find out by scanning the barcode.
Why is it good?
It’s a high yield vegetable oil crop, it needs less than half the land required by other vegetable oil crops like rapeseed, sunflower or soybean. This means that it’s the cheapest to produce!
Not only is it smooth, creamy and odourless it has a natural preservative effect helping to increase the shelf life of many food products.
It has helped to reduce poverty and improve economic growth in places like Nigeria, Brazil, Papua New Guinea and Thailand.
Why is it bad?
Probably the best known negative is that it’s causing the extinction of orangutans (they might be extinct within 10 years!), but there are also other reasons why it’s bad as if that wasn’t enough.
- Between 1,000 to 5,000 orangutans are killed every year due to palm oil development.
- 50% of orangutans have been lost in the last decade, in the same time that land used for palm oil plantations has doubled.
- 90% of orangutans natural habitat (tropical rainforest) has been lost. Wild populations are cut off from each other, reducing genetic diversity.
- Palm oil trees grow best on land which has not previously been used for agriculture, meaning more rainforest is chopped down.
- Pesticides and fertilizers used on plantations pollute the land and runoff into the rivers.
- A rainforest is biodiverse, a palm oil plantation is not.
- Plantations lower the water table, meaning the land gets drier, trees die and remaining rainforest produces less fruit for wildlife.
- Land is cleared using slash and burn – increasing greenhouse gas emissions.
- Primary rainforests sit on peat bogs which store more carbon dioxide than any other ecosystem, burning them releases the carbon dioxide.
- Indonesia has the third highest greenhouse gas emissions because of clearing land for palm oil plantations.
– source
What are the alternatives?
It’s cheap, so sadly that trumps everything for the majority of companies. However the cost to wildlife and to the planet is too great to ignore. There are plenty of companies that are able to make products with no palm oil whatsoever and to be fair the price often isn’t that different.
When making soap the following can all be used as a substitute:
- Sweet Almond Oil
- Cottonseed Oil
- Grapeseed Oil
- Lard
- Tallow
- Venison Fat
- Olive Oil
- Rice Bran Oil
- Safflower Oil
- Shortening
- Soybean Oil
- Sunflower Oil
– source
Is Sustainable Palm Oil Better?
The word sustainable automatically makes this sound like it should be a good option, but the Orangutan Foundation International (OFI) and many others say that palm oil should be avoided altogether. This is because deforestation continues and brands who claim to be sustainable can’t always prove where they get it from. RSPO certification might not be worth the paper it’s written on, because they allow deforestation to continue.
My personal feeling is that it should be avoided altogether but when buying any product check its ingredient list and at least look for the RSPO logo.
What Can You Do?
- Don’t buy it – use an app to help you work out the ingredients in your favourite products. Orangutan Foundation app (doesn’t distinguish between sustainable / non-sustainable) – RSPO app or the Giki app which do mention whether it’s sustainable or not.
- Make some things yourself – try these.
- Write to companies asking them to ditch palm oil.
- If you must buy a product with it look for RSPO certification.
Another article you might find interesting:
Why Going Green Means Making Compromises (But That’s Ok)
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Sources
- https://askrspo.force.com/s/article/Why-is-palm-oil-so-popular
- https://www.worldwildlife.org/pages/which-everyday-products-contain-palm-oil
- https://orangutan.org/
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I totally agree with you.
But surprisingly, When I bought some hand products from Kew shop I found that their main ingredient is palm oil in its different states. I complained and they said it was from sustainable sources…. Like you any palm oil is ba bad one.