Unilever Takes A Step Toward Sustainable Palm Oil

It's a step forward in using sustainably-sourced palm oil, and reining in the massive rainforest destruction generally associated with palm oil production: Unilever has announced that all of its palm oil purchases will come from “known sources” by the end of 2014. The commitment is the Rotterdam-based food, home, and personal care giant’s second to last step on its journey to using only traceable and certified sustainable palm oil by 2020.

Unilever purchases roughly 1.5 million tonnes of palm oil each year, amounting to about three percent of global demand.

The Director of WWF’s Market Transformation Initiative, Richard Holland, praised the commitment, and called it “a very promising step on the continuing journey towards real market transformation to sustainable palm oil.”

The timing of the announcement was no doubt planned to coincide with start of the COP19 UN climate talks, which just kicked off in Poland, as palm oil production often comes at a high climate cost.

The overwhelming majority of the world’s palm oil comes from plantations in Indonesia and Malaysia, which are often cleared of rainforest. This results in large increases in carbon emissions, first from emissions stored in the soil and forest biomass that are released due to land clearance, and secondly because palm oil plantations suck far less carbon emissions from the atmosphere than an actual forest.

When the emissions from deforestation are included in national emission totals, something that is not always done, Indonesia rises quickly to be one of the leading emitters of greenhouse gases.

In addition to increasing climate change, deforestation for palm oil plantations has been linked with further endangering several important and iconic rainforests species, particularly in Borneo and Sumatra. Orangutans are often targeted by plantation workers, who sometimes mutilate their hands in retaliation for the great apes raiding the plantation. Biodiversity in these plantations is far lower than in natural forests, further stressing animal species. Plantations also threaten the ability of local people to continue traditional hunting and foraging practices, disrupting the lives of already often marginalized communities.

Sustainable palm oil attempts to right these wrongs, as growing the palms that produce palm oil can be done without clearing new land or threatening wildlife.

The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil was established in 2004, with both WWF and Unilever as backers. Uptake of sustainable palm oil by producers of food and personal care products is growing, though it's still a small part of the overall palm oil market. Business Green reports that in the UK the amount of certified sustainable palm oil has doubled since 2009, rising to somewhere between 52 and 60 percent of imports.

This follows a slow start to the uptake of sustainable palm oil, which has been countered by campaigning from environmental groups and some high-profile commitments.

In 2009, Vermont-based Seventh Generation committed to buying sustainable palm oil credits for all of its purchases. At the time it was the only North American company to make such a commitment. A year later, the Netherlands committed to using only sustainably-sourced palm oil by the end of 2015. The latter is particular important, as Dutch businesses are Europe’s largest importer and exporter of palm oil.

But overall, of the roughly 48 million tons of palm oil produced annually around the world, less than 15 percent is certified as sustainable.