Palm oil is a key ingredient in everything from soaps and shampoos to ice-cream and margarine. Farmers today produce more than 73m tonnes of it each year – more than double the amount of 20 years ago. But the rapid growth of palm fruit plantations in Indonesia and Malaysia has caused major deforestation and human rights issues.
An industry-wide shift to sustainable palm oil is therefore urgently needed. Palm oil supply chains are long and complex, however, spanning multiple traders, storage tanks, pipelines and oil tankers. It’s difficult and expensive for companies to establish fully segregated supply chains for sustainable palm oil, so batches that have been produced sustainably are often shipped in bulk and commingled with conventional palm oil.
