Photo courtesy of Benjamin Errickson
Written by Jessica Royal
Your everyday routines may be causing the death of orangutans and other endangered wildlife such as tigers and elephants.
It is hard to perceive that something as mundane as brushing your teeth with toothpaste, washing your hair with shampoo, having toast with margarine and coffee with creamer for breakfast and then washing your dishes with dishwasher detergent can impact wildlife and the environment so greatly. Yet, if your typical morning is anything like the one described above, chances are you consume palm oil at least five times a day.
Palm oil is an edible vegetable oil derived from the fruit of the oil palm tree which flourishes in tropical conditions. Its versatility, high yield, low price and long shelf life make it a popular alternative to other less yielding and costly oils in global markets.
Look around your house, dorm or office and you will find dozens of products that use palm oil: soap, chocolate, shampoo, detergent, packaged products, frozen foods and even lipstick.
The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) estimates palm oil to be in 50 percent of all packaged items in the supermarket.
Well-known companies such as Dunkin’ Donuts, Starbucks, Yum Brands Inc. and Smucker’s are still using non-sustainable palm oil.
In contrast, Nestle and P&G products have switched to using sustainable palm oil because of motivation from consumers.
Why care about orangutans? The orangutan is a slow-maturing, solitary orange arboreal ape native to Sumatra and Borneo that shares nearly 97 percent of our DNA.
It is a keystone species that plays a vital role in maintaining the health of the ecosystem by helping with seed dispersal impacting other food chains and their respective flora and fauna.
Thus, saving the orangutan saves many other species that share the same habitat.
There are 50,000-100,000 orangutans left in the wild and around 3,000 orangutans are killed annually.
Previously, the greatest threat to this slow recovering species was extensive logging in the rain forests where they live.
Now, conversion of their limited remaining habitat for palm oil cultivation is furthering their extinction in the wild because many end up venturing into newly planted areas of the oil-palm trying to reach their food source and are killed on site to “protect” the crop.
Even though it is against the law in Malaysia and Indonesia to capture, harm or kill orangutans, it still occurs on plantations.
The conversion of rain forests to palm oil plantations does not just affect wildlife; humans are affected, too – especially the local communities that depend on the forests for their livelihoods.
Globally, the conversion of forests to palm oil plantations releases massive quantities of carbon dioxide which fuels climate change.
Some environmentalists have suggested boycotting palm oil as a solution, but this would cause significant economic problems for those who support their families by working in this industry. Moreover, if major sustainability markets such as the U.S. and Europe boycott palm oil production, producers will simply trade to other markets with fewer incentives for improved social and environmental practices.
For these reasons, the best solution to the palm oil problem is to grow it in a responsible and sustainable way. Yet, at present, sustainable palm oil only accounts for about 20 percent of global production.
We must pay attention to packaging labels and invest in products with sustainable logos or products from companies in agreement with the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), which you can check using the “Sustainable Palm Oil Shopping” app.
Hopefully, as consumers, we can use our powers to compel companies to implement sustainable processes and regulations when cultivating palm oil and thus save unique wildlife species like the orangutan from extinction.
