Sounds good! Sustainable is important in its own right, of course, and because non-sustainable harvesting kills about 5,000 orang-utans a year, apparently. I was horrified to read this figure - I adore orang-utans, I studied them in the physical anthropology section of my degree course many moons ago, love them to bits.
Just who *is* the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil tho? This is their own description of themselves: "RSPO is a not-for-profi t association that unites stakeholders from seven sectors of the palm oil industry - oil palm producers, palm oil processors or traders, consumer goods manufacturers, retailers, banks and investors, environmental or nature conservation NGOs and social or developmental NGOs - to develop and implement global standards for sustainable palm oil."
Hmmm. Not the greenest people in the world then. Is something better than nothing? I suppose so, frankly its hard to tell at the moment. This is the Roundtable website:
http://www.rspo.org/
and this is the blurb from the World Wildlife Fund about this scoring process:
http://www.wwf.org.uk/wwf_articles.cfm?unewsid=5439
This whole project is pretty sobering. Until this initiative got going, even as a vegetarian I was contributing to the extinction of the orang-utan by buying Waitrose Own Label products. Still am, to the extent of 32% of my purchases.
Waitrose also mention that they're a member of the British Retail Consortium Palm Oil Committee. Sounds good, huh? They're on the case.
Well, not necessarily. This is the website of the BRC:
http://www.brc.org.uk/brc_home.asp
I've searched all over the site, and as many of its subsidiaries are open for business, and there's no mention of palm oil anywhere. I wonder how effective that committee is? So I decided to use the contact details and sent them an email, which I've saved on a draft post on this blog. We'll see what happens, shall we?
Well done for your investigating! I must confess I knew we were 'supposed' to be avoiding palm oil, but not quite *why*... I am really quite out of touch with such things at the minute, and your post has come just as I'm starting to realise that. Must get my own investigating head back on!
ReplyDeleteThanks :)
Thanks! I often think that these initiatives are meant to just delude the customers (us) into thinking that they're working really hard. The BRC people may be doing exactly that, I don't know yet, but the Roundtable does sound like its making a genuine contribution.
ReplyDeleteGreat post - I've moved over to cold pressed rape seed oil as I'm trying to source what I can locally in Orkney (as you know) and also if I can't get it here - I'm looking for 'local' (eg UK substitutes for things) while I can't get UK coffee or tea I can try and UK-my food. The most 'local' I can get oil wise in scotland. Excellent investigative article.
ReplyDeleteGreat Jan!
Thank you! I'm really starting to realise how much our food contributes to global warming, and there are so many ways we can have an effect - local produce, fair trade, organic, ethical processes, sustainability - its all important. And, bit by bit, we might get there.
ReplyDeleteHave you seen the articles on the Ecologist's website about palm oil? Haven't read in depth, but might shed a little more light?
ReplyDeleteExcellent post and some interesting comments for me to follow up. I became "aware" of the issues with Palm Oil a few weeks ago when listening to the food programme on radio 4 http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b016kgv1/Food_Programme_Palm_Oil/
ReplyDeleteIt is worth a listen as they interview somebody from RSPO.
I am sorry to say that I have recently realised how lax I have become in checking food ingredients so that is a new mission for me. The radio 4 programme is an excellent source of information which usually sends me off to investigate further
Thanks both! This seems like an issue whose time has come ... new post coming up, as I had a reply to my email on the contact form of the BRC.
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