Setting the Record Straight on “Palm” in Consumer Products
How is palm oil produced?
Earth.org, a website that claims to know all about what is good for planetary and human health published a piece recently that casts doubts about what the website actually knows.
The piece which carried the grand title “Palm Oil Deforestation: Origins, Environmental Degradation and Solutions” talked up the environmental destruction caused by palm oil and preyed on woke issues like orangutans.
This is a disservice to the efforts of palm oil producing countries like Colombia, Malaysia and Indonesia which have put numerous programs into place to reduce the environmental impact of palm oil production.
Blaming palm oil for all the environmental problems in Indonesia however, shows that Earth.org did not do their homework.
“NASA researchers say that accelerated slash and burn forest clearing in Borneo contributed to the largest single-year global increase in carbon emissions in two millenniums, which transformed Indonesia into the world’s fourth-largest source of carbon emissions.”
Any reports on palm oil and its impact on the environment should have known that palm oil is not the only cause of tropical forest loss.
The 2015 wildfires in Indonesia, which media sources like Earth.org like to blame on its palm oil industry, was caused by an extreme El Nino effect. The same El Nino period was also responsible for extreme wildfires in the Amazon, Canada to Siberia. Were the soy, canola and sunflower industries in these countries to blame? Should rapeseed and sunflower be blamed for the on-going wildfires in Europe which are burning out of control in 2022?
The editors at Earth.org should be embarrassed with the poor supporting content in the piece as they failed to note new reports on the environmental impact of palm oil on Indonesia.
Plantations may be a threat to orangutans in Indonesia but they are not all palm oil. The palm oil industry in Indonesia has one of the strongest policies in place to protect orangutans which is backed by palm oil certification schemes as well as the government.
The Editors should have checked the old claim that 300 football fields are lost every hour globally, to palm oil. There would be no tropical rainforests left if this claim has been true since 2015.
But the most outrageous claim is Earth.org’s spin on the booming popularity of palm oil in the US. Earth.org made this strange connection between the US’s biofuel mandate and the popularity of palm oil, further claiming that:
"Indonesian and Malaysian palm oil flooded western markets, with a crippling effect on the tropical rainforests.
Emboldened by the unprecedented palm oil boom, large corporations cornered the market and started acquiring more land to expand production. It led to today’s ongoing industrial-scale deforestation – and a huge spike in carbon emissions."
This is pure nonsense from Earth.org
The boom in the popularity of palm oil in consumer products in the US had nothing to do with biodiesel production but everything to do with human health. The US FDA banned trans fats in 2015. Consumer goods companies knew this was coming and prepared a healthy substitute which just happened to be, palm oil.
Did this have a crippling effect on tropical rainforests? Did large corporations corner the market and acquired more land leading to industrial scale deforestation and a huge spike in carbon emissions?
It did not.
Deforestation rates have decreased steadily since 2015. In 2021, Indonesia recorded its lowest annual deforestation rate since 1990. The country lost only 285,300 acres of forest cover— a startling 75% drop from 2019.
One would think, based on Earth.org’s preference for quoting reports from 2015 and earlier, that the palm oil industry would have wreaked havoc in Indonesia but the facts do not lie.
Earth.org does not seem to have a problem with lying when they claimed that palm oil is a dirty word and therefore manufacturers hide and disguise their presence. Quoting Earth.org
"Palm oil has indeed become a “dirty word” that manufacturers avoid on their packaging; and it is often not a labelling requirement. Derivatives can appear under many names, disguising their presence in everyday off-the shelf products."
It is unclear where the writers for Earth.org are based. The contact information shows a Hong Kong address where perhaps, labeling laws are loose. For major markets in North America and Europe, precise ingredient information is required by laws governing label information.
For the information of Earth.org, derivatives are identified in a format (eg INCI International Nomenclature of Cosmetic Ingredients) accepted by the EU, US, China and Japan in order to make it easy for global trade. The strange sounding names were not created to hide or disguise palm oil in consumer products. Information on this is easily found on the internet.
As for the displayed claim that “anything with the word Palm” is derived from palm oil, this is another lie.
Palmitic acid for example, (you can’t get any more palmy than this ) is defined as “a common saturated fatty acid found in fats and waxes including olive oil, palm oil, and body lipids.”
Palmate or palmitate may be equally “palmy” by name but its sources are varied from liver, eggs, cheese and of course, palm oil.
Some of the names get technical so at the risk of looking lazy, we asked a chemical engineer, Ir Qua Kiat Seng from Malaysia’s Monash University for clarification. He was kind enough to point out that factual information is all available online.
Decyl glucoside - is produced by the reaction of glucose from corn starch with the fatty alcohol decanol, which is derived from coconut or palm kernel.
Sodium lauryl sulfate- may be derived from coconut or palm kernel.
Cetearyl alcohol- is a waxy, white substance that's solid at room temperature. It naturally comes from vegetable oils—including coconut, palm, and soy oil
Earth.org was wrong on all three counts in saying these are strictly derived from palm oil.
The rest of what Earth.org wrote about palm oil is a sad testament to the quality of information on its website. The misinformation is so easily challenged that one has to wonder, if the editors were lazy or simply incompetent.
Published July 2022. CSPO Watch
The piece which carried the grand title “Palm Oil Deforestation: Origins, Environmental Degradation and Solutions” talked up the environmental destruction caused by palm oil and preyed on woke issues like orangutans.
This is a disservice to the efforts of palm oil producing countries like Colombia, Malaysia and Indonesia which have put numerous programs into place to reduce the environmental impact of palm oil production.
Blaming palm oil for all the environmental problems in Indonesia however, shows that Earth.org did not do their homework.
“NASA researchers say that accelerated slash and burn forest clearing in Borneo contributed to the largest single-year global increase in carbon emissions in two millenniums, which transformed Indonesia into the world’s fourth-largest source of carbon emissions.”
Any reports on palm oil and its impact on the environment should have known that palm oil is not the only cause of tropical forest loss.
The 2015 wildfires in Indonesia, which media sources like Earth.org like to blame on its palm oil industry, was caused by an extreme El Nino effect. The same El Nino period was also responsible for extreme wildfires in the Amazon, Canada to Siberia. Were the soy, canola and sunflower industries in these countries to blame? Should rapeseed and sunflower be blamed for the on-going wildfires in Europe which are burning out of control in 2022?
The editors at Earth.org should be embarrassed with the poor supporting content in the piece as they failed to note new reports on the environmental impact of palm oil on Indonesia.
Plantations may be a threat to orangutans in Indonesia but they are not all palm oil. The palm oil industry in Indonesia has one of the strongest policies in place to protect orangutans which is backed by palm oil certification schemes as well as the government.
The Editors should have checked the old claim that 300 football fields are lost every hour globally, to palm oil. There would be no tropical rainforests left if this claim has been true since 2015.
But the most outrageous claim is Earth.org’s spin on the booming popularity of palm oil in the US. Earth.org made this strange connection between the US’s biofuel mandate and the popularity of palm oil, further claiming that:
"Indonesian and Malaysian palm oil flooded western markets, with a crippling effect on the tropical rainforests.
Emboldened by the unprecedented palm oil boom, large corporations cornered the market and started acquiring more land to expand production. It led to today’s ongoing industrial-scale deforestation – and a huge spike in carbon emissions."
This is pure nonsense from Earth.org
The boom in the popularity of palm oil in consumer products in the US had nothing to do with biodiesel production but everything to do with human health. The US FDA banned trans fats in 2015. Consumer goods companies knew this was coming and prepared a healthy substitute which just happened to be, palm oil.
Did this have a crippling effect on tropical rainforests? Did large corporations corner the market and acquired more land leading to industrial scale deforestation and a huge spike in carbon emissions?
It did not.
Deforestation rates have decreased steadily since 2015. In 2021, Indonesia recorded its lowest annual deforestation rate since 1990. The country lost only 285,300 acres of forest cover— a startling 75% drop from 2019.
One would think, based on Earth.org’s preference for quoting reports from 2015 and earlier, that the palm oil industry would have wreaked havoc in Indonesia but the facts do not lie.
Earth.org does not seem to have a problem with lying when they claimed that palm oil is a dirty word and therefore manufacturers hide and disguise their presence. Quoting Earth.org
"Palm oil has indeed become a “dirty word” that manufacturers avoid on their packaging; and it is often not a labelling requirement. Derivatives can appear under many names, disguising their presence in everyday off-the shelf products."
It is unclear where the writers for Earth.org are based. The contact information shows a Hong Kong address where perhaps, labeling laws are loose. For major markets in North America and Europe, precise ingredient information is required by laws governing label information.
For the information of Earth.org, derivatives are identified in a format (eg INCI International Nomenclature of Cosmetic Ingredients) accepted by the EU, US, China and Japan in order to make it easy for global trade. The strange sounding names were not created to hide or disguise palm oil in consumer products. Information on this is easily found on the internet.
As for the displayed claim that “anything with the word Palm” is derived from palm oil, this is another lie.
Palmitic acid for example, (you can’t get any more palmy than this ) is defined as “a common saturated fatty acid found in fats and waxes including olive oil, palm oil, and body lipids.”
Palmate or palmitate may be equally “palmy” by name but its sources are varied from liver, eggs, cheese and of course, palm oil.
Some of the names get technical so at the risk of looking lazy, we asked a chemical engineer, Ir Qua Kiat Seng from Malaysia’s Monash University for clarification. He was kind enough to point out that factual information is all available online.
Decyl glucoside - is produced by the reaction of glucose from corn starch with the fatty alcohol decanol, which is derived from coconut or palm kernel.
Sodium lauryl sulfate- may be derived from coconut or palm kernel.
Cetearyl alcohol- is a waxy, white substance that's solid at room temperature. It naturally comes from vegetable oils—including coconut, palm, and soy oil
Earth.org was wrong on all three counts in saying these are strictly derived from palm oil.
The rest of what Earth.org wrote about palm oil is a sad testament to the quality of information on its website. The misinformation is so easily challenged that one has to wonder, if the editors were lazy or simply incompetent.
Published July 2022. CSPO Watch
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