Why We Don’t Use Palm Oil

Palm oil is the most globally consumed vegetable oil. It is very versatile and can be found in so many products ranging from cosmetics, detergents, biodiesel, soaps as well as pizza and ice cream.

The demand for palm oil and palm oil derivatives is growing at an astounding rate. A growth of 7.5% is expected in the palm oil industry, between 2015-2022. “Crude palm oil was the largest palm oil derivative and accounted for over 75% of total market volume in 2014.” estimates Grand view research.

The growth in global demand of palm oil leads to a growth in production and agricultural expansion. The expansion comes with a tremendous and devastating cost to the environment.

Tropical Rain Forests in South East Asia (the largest exporter of palm oil) are being torn up to provide land for palm oil plantations, but in turn are destroying our planet. The accelerated cultivation methods, led by illegal palm oil plantations, result in environmental pollution of the air, soil and water sources. Providing land for this crop has come with annihilating costs to the planet by destroying the home of various endangered species of animals. This contributes substantially to the greenhouse effect in our planet, which is associated with global climate change. The detrimental methods used to make land for palm oil farms leads to environmental pollution, which increases overall health problems of the population.

In the last 20 years, over 3.5 million hectares of Indonesian and Malaysian forests have been destroyed to make way for palm oil. Almost 80% of orangutan habitats have disappeared (The Orangutan Project). They refer to this as the Orangutan Genocide.  Along with the orangutans, palm oil cultivation is a threat to other endangered species such as: elephants, tigers, and rhinos.

The popularity of palm oil is attributable to its versatility, availability, low monetary cost of production and inexpensive prices for consumers. Palm oil is used as the base product in the majority of soaps, various skin products and cosmetics. We, at Salt Way, make the choice to not utilize palm oil or palm oil derivatives in any of our products.

In support of our beautiful planet and all its inhabitants, join us as we take the stance against the usage of palm oil.

-Luana Oh Scienza, Kamila Oh

Sources:

http://www.worldwildlife.org/stories/endangered-species-threatened-by-unsustainable-palm-oil-production
http://www.saynotopalmoil.com/Whats_the_issue.php
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1836037
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/harvesting-palm-oil-and-rainforests/