Don't Get Too Excited: The Jungle Isn't Saved Yet
4th March 2012
Share This Article:
Tesco's and RSPB have teamed up to support sustainable palm oil. But Tesco’s have more palm oil products on their shelves than I dare to count. Am I the only one who sees reason to be sceptical?

- Article continues below...
- More stories you may like...
- The Obama Questions
In order to farm palm oil you have to destroy the canopy unless you have, as if by magic, found a place where palm oil is already growing over thousands of hectares. A video by the RSPO lists what it is that they do for sustainability, and these include the 'recycling' of plants, as opposed to burning or logging them. But this isn't like the organisations who pledge to plant a tree for every book they sell or every product they make: endeavouring to replant every tree within the hectares of jungle territory destroyed for palm oil is unrealistic, and they are hardly surveying every type of plant that's destroyed (right, this one's poisonous, let's replant that one...and this one is a sago plant, okay...) as if the canopy can grow back within a day, retaining it's diversity. On top of that, it's hardly what they've said. So let's have a look at the other promises within this video: Fertiliser will be used on the palm oil (in natural areas which have never had fertiliser), but apparently it's sustainable, whatever that means. Second, buffalo's are being used to transport supplies - well, that won't take long to be complained about by animal rights activists. Finally, the RSPO certifies products which have been made sustainably. Personally, I've not seen anything when I've been walking the aisles through Tesco's, staring at the ingredients of peanut butters and trying to find one which doesn't have palm oil within it. Beware that the video is slightly utopian, even ending with a pair smiling on bicycles. Personally, I don't trust any organisation which titles their video 'The Gathering Momentum' and expects us to think that such a statement makes sense.
Still, the RSPO has been running since 2004 and has the support of not only supermarkets, including Sainsbury's which helped to launch it, the RSPB (and Tesco's), but also the WWF and - well - if they see something in this idea, then there must be something good there. But Greenpeace has found evidence that unsustainable practices are still going ahead, under the eye of RSPO; that, essentially, sustainability when it comes to palm oil is all just an 'illusion'. Additionally, a certification organisation, 'Green Palm', suggests that sustainable palm oil is simply the only viable solution at the moment. You can't boycott palm oil goods because the demand still exists elsewhere in the world and if you do, your country be out of the economy, just like that.
The demand for palm oil is so high, and our alternatives so low, that the only 'solution' at currently is raising awareness and telling people to be careful. Given that, I suppose, we must be happy that RSPB and RSPO and Tesco's exist to take these matters so strongly into their own hands. We can't stop using Palm Oil - it's in our cars, it's in our biscuits, it's in our cosmetics (although, frankly, I do not believe that many of them are a necessary part of living), and even many of the tribes, a little influenced by the outside markets, eat the biscuits. Tesco's, I suppose, can at least finance our positive efforts further, even if palm oil - sustainable or unsustainable - is practically spilling off their shelves. Nobody can say that we're not trying to avoid falling into the abyss with our burning trees above us, but we could do a little more.
My solution? Use only what's necessary. We don't really need to fill up the shelves in Boots with cosmetic products. Ladies, let's not feel as if we actually have to use these products! Killing species, and potentially ourselves, because we have been taught to dislike the way we look is hardly justifiable. So next time, women of the world, when you smother your bodies in cosmetics, think of the dying trees, and the orangutans. You'll never step into Boots again.
You might also like...
People who read this also read...
TRENDING
TRENDING CHANNELS
CONTRIBUTOR OF THE MONTH