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| Photograph by Amy Foote Dipterocarp tree in Danum Valley, Sabah |
Borneo is the third largest island in the world and home to wealth of biodiversity. Over the decades, Borneo has suffered from extensive deforestation due to demand for tropical timber and palm oil. In 2008, I visited Borneo and witnessed the extensive palm oil plantations. I wondered, what is so much palm oil used for anyway. I started digging and learned that palm oil is used for several purposes and is a component in both food and non food products. Aside from cooking, palm oil is found in food products such as breakfast bars, crackers, baked goods, margarine, instant noodles, baby formula and non-food products such as lotions, cosmetics, soap, plastics, biodiesel, candles, cleaning products, shampoos and more. You can check out the America Palm Oil website to learn more. I went to the store and looked at the ingredients in all sorts of products and found it hard to find products without palm oil especially in the snack and processed food aisles.
How do we as consumers have the power to to encourage sustainable use of resources?
Check out the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm oil.
Links to learn more
Borneo's Rainforest
Borneo's Moment of Truth
WWF - Borneo and Sumatra - Priceless forests harbor untold species
American Palm Oil
Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil
What's the purpose of Palm Oil anyway? If it's used so much, what does it do for the product? It seems to be used over a wide variety of things, from food to hair products...it's kind of gross to think that the same thing that we are eating we are also using in our hair and lotions.
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DeleteI remember you talking about this in class a little bit! Really interesting, I had no idea palm oil was in so much stuff. We talk about sustainability and deforestation a lot in my Food Politics class, but avoiding things with palm oil in it is hard.
ReplyDeleteI also have the same question as Miriah though. What does it do for products that it is used so much? Is there some sort of replacement companies could be using? Also, have there been any sort of sustainability laws passed in Borneo to keep the deforestation at a minimum? I'm always really interested in that sort of thing, so I would like to find out.
I have the same questions as Miriah also. what is palm oil used for?? and what does it do??
ReplyDeleteBy reading what your wrote I'm really surprised that palm oil is in alot of products. I only knew of one, Peanut Butter. But there is alot of different products with it. What surprised me the most is that baby formula has palm oil, I didn't know that, and I now that I do I wish I would of bought organic baby formula for my daughter. I don't know if palm oil is good for us or not but I would have bought organic formula for my daughter anyways.
And I think that as consumers we should limit how many trees are cut down for palm oil/timber. And also see if palm oil is needed for all the different things it is used for.
well i went looking to find out if there was an alternative to palm oil and the first website i found did not exactly have what i was looking for. But it did have some really awful pictures
ReplyDelete:(
http://www.born-to-be-wild.org/html/palm_oil.html
Can't there be a substitute for palm oil? Normally things like that are incredibly expensive, so is that the case with this also?
ReplyDeleteThe above link is really eye-opening.. it's terrible to see that it effects all apsects of the natural environment including the animals
I noticed the other day that the second ingredient (which also means the second most used ingredient) on a bowl of instant noodles that I was about to eat was Palm Oil. I was surprised that it could be so heavily used in that type of food!
ReplyDeleteMost of the time there is an easy way to aviod products like palm oil, but I feel like this is going to be tough to avoid since the foods it is used in are so common. If someone finds a reasonable way to avoid it comment on here.
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