Retail and food industry improving palm oil sourcing, says WWF

WWF praises companies such as Cadbury and Unilever for using sustainable palm oil, but says situation is still bad

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Waitrose uses the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil logo, after WWF awarded it full marks for its palm oil sourcing. Photograph: WWF

Supermarkets and food companies are improving how they source palm oil, a key ingredient in half of all packaged foods – but not fast enough to prevent further environmental damage, according to the World Wildlife Fund.


"In the UK in particular we see progress," said Adam Harrison, palm oil expert at WWF UK. "Due to several campaigns highlighting the damage caused by the rapid spread of palm plantations, companies see they are under pressure and respond."

But he added: "Although there has been some progress on sustainable palm oil, new commitments are simply not translating fast enough into increased use of certified sustainable palm oil." The report gives Unilever, the world's biggest buyer of palm oil, 8 out of a possible 9. The list of 132 major retailers and consumer goods manufacturers includes some from Australia and Japan for the first time.

According to WWF, palm oil is used in a vast range of foods and toiletries – often just listed as "vegetable oil/fat" in the ingredients. It crops up in everything from bread and ice cream to soap and shampoo.

Palm trees grow in tropical regions, and tracts of tropical forests are often cleared to make room for plantations to meet export markets. In the major palm oil producing regions, Indonesia and Malaysia, it is estimated that almost one-third of forest loss in the past 10 years has been due to the expansion of oil palm.

Environmentalists regard unsustainable palm oil production as a danger not only for orang-utans, elephants, tigers and rhinos in Asia, but also to the climate of the planet as enormous amounts of carbon dioxide are released when forests or peat lands are destroyed. Furthermore, in some cases it has been reported that local people have been displaced from their land.

"Palm oil itself is not the issue," Harrison noted. "The problem is how and where palm oil is produced." To compile the new report, Harrison and his colleagues used publicly available information to examine each company's commitment to, and use of, palm oil certified to the internationally recognised standards of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO).

Set up in 2004, the RSPO requires members not to clear primary forest or any land that is valuable for communities and wildlife. In 2011, more than 5 million tonnes, or 10% of the global palm oil production, was certified to the RSPO standard. However only half of that was sold. The RSPO has been criticised by green groups for not including greenhouse gas emissions as part of its criteria.

The main questions for the WWF assessment were: whether the company is an active member of the RSPO; has made a public commitment to RSPO-certified sustainable palm oil; publishes how much palm oil it uses and publishes how much of that is RSPO-certified.

Palm oil has been used for centuries as a cooking oil in West Africa, before it was discovered that the oil palm grew well in the Far East. Its big bunches of red fruit are rich in oil that is a cheap ingredient in food production.

Consumption is increasing globally and is set to grow from about 50 million tonnes in 2011 to at least 77 million tonnes in 2050, according to WWF. Its use may possibly grow even more if the demand increases for palm oil as a biofuel. As palm yields more oil per hectare of land than soyabeans, rapeseed or sunflowers "any substitute would need more land", says Harrison.