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Palm Oil Products

Most people in Britain eat palm oil several times a day, usually without even knowing it. It may sound harmless enough but palm oil production is responsible for much of the rainforest destruction in Malaysia and Indonesia. And it’s a growth industry. Indonesia is currently planning on extending its plantations by 50% in prime Borneo forest to create a 9 million hectare plantation, roughly the size of Wales. With the destruction of these forests there is an unavoidable impact on the wildlife it shelters, perhaps most notably the poor struggling orangutans.

The trouble is it’s very hard to avoid palm oil. Not only is it in margarine, biscuits, chocolate, pastry products, and so on, it is also in soap, detergents, toothpaste and other toiletries. And now there is a push to fill our cars with it too, in the form of bio-diesel.

Manufacturers are often reluctant to talk about where their palm oil comes from but one tip for consumers could be to try to choose products that use other oils and just hope that pressure from environmentalists will eventually encourage industries to start banning palm oil from non-sustainable plantations.