Just over a year ago soy oil was selling for 23 cents a pound. Today it is 56 cents a pound. Only because of the interest in biofuels as a substitute for petroleum. As the price of soy beans and other vegetable oils ascends so do the other potential bio-diesel feedstocks around the world.
If the equation for producing local renewable fuels causes the prices of food to increase in connection with vegetable oils, then the free marketplace will find a source ready to supply the oils regardless of the degradation on local ecospheres.
During the past couple of decades the Amazon rain forest has been squandered over grazing land to grow beef for world wide hamburger consumption. It is beginning to appear that Palm Oil has become one of those commodities that will now desecrate the remaining forests and meadows of the world to feed combustion engines the world over.
Palm oil, as one of the world's most popular vegetable oils, is already used in countless everyday items including cosmetics, household products and foods. Its popularity has resulted in the rapid destruction of rainforests, due to irresponsible production. Until recently most fast food chains have used a frying fat formula called “Tropical Oil” which may have included: palm, Coconut oil and a blend of many other cheap and high in cholesterol oils.
Palm oil is frequently listed in ingredients as unspecified, ambiguous ‘vegetable oil’ and is in an estimated one in 10 of all products sold in Britain, from chocolate to cosmetics to animal feed.
Deforestation in Indonesia and Malaysia as well as many other countries and the ensuing consequences to local wildlife and to global climate has now become a issue to many environmentalists. Palm oil has been used for centuries since Europe stopped using whale oil as a cooking and compounding ingredient and there are many economies that are dependent on palm oil which has been a standard crop for centuries like in Nigeria.
Even though cosmetics are responsible for just 7% of the world’s production of Palm Oil consumption, many foods from ice cream to mayonnaise have used “tropical oils” in their manufacture. A more sustainable cure for the use of Palm oil in cosmetic manufacture could be a saponified mixture of rapeseed oil, sunflower oil and coconut oil. The Body Shop has become the first cosmetics retailer to introduce sustainable palm oil into the global beauty industry.
Currently palm oil can be found in 10% of products in supermarkets, and is often listed generically as ‘vegetable oil’ making it difficult to boycott.
World Standards On Agfuels Were Planned Too Late
WWF has warned that safeguards for biofuels are not going to curb deforestation in the here and now.
The government of Indonesia has recognized that biofuels will only make sense if they are guaranteed to save carbon emissions and can be grown without destroying the environment, but mandatory carbon and sustainability standards will not be in place until 2010 and 2011, despite the Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation (RTFO) coming into place in April 2007
Adam Harrison, Food and Agriculture Policy Officer at WWF, said: ‘Without immediate standards for all there is a risk that bad practices will be built into the industry from the start - making it difficult in the future to change direction.’
WWF has also identified a loophole in the RTFO that will allow companies to supply 'deforestation diesel' rather than a real green fuel. WWF is calling for a minimum level of carbon savings which all biofuels must be expected to reach, taking into account the whole lifecycle, including land clearance to grow the crop.
World wildlife Fund hopes more retailers will begin sourcing www.RSPO.org
certified sustainable palm oil as soon as it becomes available later this year.
Asda, the giant UK grocer, has joined The Body Shop in deciding to empty its shelves of destructive palm oil. It becomes Britain’s first supermarket chain to tell suppliers it will not accept products unless they can guarantee their palm oil is from sustainably run plantations.
The chain has already banned palm oil sourced from the worst affected regions in Borneo and Sumatra and within a year hopes to have banned all unsustainable palm oil from 500 products.
Chris Brown, Asda's head of sustainable sourcing, said it would take time to work with suppliers to find sustainable supplies, but the supermarket is starting work now rather than waiting for the Roundtable meeting in November because of the speed of rainforest destruction. Friends of the Earth calculates an area the size of Wales is being cut down in Indonesia alone every year, and a 'major driver' is palm oil. 'I don't want to be associated with orangutan habitat destruction,' said Brown.
Sainsbury’s, another giant UK retailer, has pledged to follow in Asda’s footprint by ensuring that the palm oil used in its own brand food will come from certified sustainable sources.
The announcement coincided with the fifth annual meeting of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), in Kuala Lumpur. The purpose of RT5, as it is known, is to discuss standards for the certification and sourcing of sustainable palm oil.
Michelle Desilets the founder and executive director of the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation UK, said: ‘It is a huge step for Sainsbury's to make this commitment to source palm oil from certified sustainable sources. The future of wild orangutans in Borneo, and many other species that live in ancient forests across the developing world is in the hands of every consumer.’
What is still missing in this issue over sustainable palm oil are the more catastrophic effects of rainforest clearance on the world’s climate. If losing one species, like the orangutans, makes everyone cringe, what about losing 1,000,000 species by 2050 due to climate chaos, land use change and destruction of habitats?
If you’re already using palm-oil free soap and cosmetics, but want to help the Orangutans go to
Sumatran Orang-utan Society, www.orangutans-sos.org working locally to save our close cousins from extinction.
There are other things we can do to reduce our palm oil consumption:
*Eat less processed foods;
*Avoid hydrogenated fats;
*Pressure manufacturers to take action.
Read a very complete account of Agfuels at: www.carbontradwatch.org/pubs/agrofuels/pdf
not suitable for bedtime reading. If after reading you then need some hope for the future, try this www.zerocarbonbritain.org.