Palm oil: The controversial ingredient that’s in nearly everything

What is palm oil?

Palm oil is a product made from the fruits of the two oil palm tree species – the African oil palm and the American oil palm. The vast majority is made from the African oil palm, Elaeis guineensis, which was originally native to tropical west and central Africa.

For thousands of years, palm oil was solely used by people living in that region. But in the 1800s, colonial powers discovered its properties. As its usefulness was recognised, palm oil began to be exported and oil palm plantations were established across tropical areas of the world.

When the oil palm trees were exported overseas, they left their insect pollinators behind. Many palm plantations had to be hand pollinated, so the production of fruits was a slow and laborious process.

This changed in the 1980s, when the palm weevil Elaeidobius kamerunicus was introduced into Asian plantations. Yields increased dramatically. This, together with a wider shift away from animal fats, led to palm oil rapidly becoming one of the most widely used vegetable products on Earth.

Where does palm oil come from?

Today, the largest producers are Indonesia and Malaysia, which together make over 60 million tonnes of palm oil every year. Much of this oil comes from the island of Borneo, where both countries have vast areas of plantations and smallholdings.

In total, Indonesia grows almost 60% of the world’s palm oil, while Malaysia produces around a quarter. Thailand, Colombia and Nigeria round out the top five.

What is palm oil used for?

Palm oil seems to be used in everything today, from foods to cleaning supplies and cosmetics. Palm oil products contain at least one of two distinct oils – crude palm oil and kernel palm oil – which have different properties.

Crude palm oil, which is made by pressing the fleshy part of the fruit, is the most widely used. It’s mostly used in foods, where it replaces alternatives like butter, as it’s cheaper, longer lasting and more versatile.

As well as being used as a cooking oil in its own right in Africa and Asia, crude palm oil’s stability at room temperature gives processed foods a longer shelf life. The WWF estimates that it’s found in almost half of all supermarket products, from ready meals to ice cream.

Farmers across the world use crude palm oil in animal feed because of its high energy content. This also means it’s suitable for powering vehicles, with crude palm oil used to make biofuels in some parts of the world.

Kernel palm oil, meanwhile, is the rarer and more expensive form of palm oil, as it can only be extracted from the crushed seeds of the fruit. It’s mainly used in soaps and cosmetics, as well as for a variety of industrial purposes. 

Why is palm oil bad for the environment?

Palm oil has become controversial because of its impact on rainforests. As oil palm trees grow best around the equator, palm oil deforestation has seen large areas of tropical rainforest cleared to make room for plantations.

The largest losses occur in southeast Asia, especially on Borneo where it has become the leading cause of deforestation. It’s particularly prominent in the Malaysian part of the island, where between 1973 and 2015 as much as 60% of rainforest lost was cleared for oil palm plantations. In Kalimantan, the Indonesian section of Borneo, this figure is around 15%. 

Professor Jane Hill, who investigates human impacts on rainforests at the University of York, says that in the past, plantations were often developed where forests had already been heavily modified.  

“Many of these forests generated income from commercial logging for timber,” she explains. “Bornean forests, for instance, are dominated by dipterocarp trees whose timber is used to make MDF.”

“However, unsustainable logging practices resulted in forests that failed to grow back as quickly as expected and so weren’t economically viable for timber production anymore. Instead, the palm oil industry developed in its place to replace the income from timber.”

“What remains is a mosaic of patches of remaining forest within a sea of palm oil, urbanisation and roads.”

The growth of plantations in Borneo has also led to the loss of peat swamp forests, which store large amounts of carbon. This is released as carbon dioxide when the swamps are drained for palm oil production, exacerbating climate change.

Some estimates suggest that the drainage of peat swamps in Malaysia and Indonesia are responsible for 1% of the entire world’s greenhouse gas emissions.

Palm oil and wildlife

As rainforests are lost, the animals that depend on them are struggling more and more. While oil palm plantations can support some wildlife, they’re missing the resources that many rainforest species need.

“Oil palm plantations aren’t completely devoid of wildlife, but only certain species can survive there,” Jane says. “The species richness of groups like insects falls by around 40% or more in plantations, as they don’t have the plants that the insect larvae need to feed and grow.”

Declines may be even higher for mammals, birds, amphibians and reptiles. Some estimates suggest that less than a quarter of vertebrate species found in rainforests survive on an oil palm plantation.  

On Borneo, these include iconic animals such as Bornean orangutans, Sumatran rhinos and Bornean elephants. They’re all now classed as Endangered or Critically Endangered, with habitat destruction for palm oil thought to have played a key role.

As well as facing habitat loss, some of these animals are hunted for food and ivory.  People also shoot and poison the elephants because they can damage palm oil plantations.

Photojournalist Aaron ‘Bertie’ Gekoski documented this situation in southeast Asia while part of a tagging mission with Sabah’s Wildlife Rescue Unit. 

“Elephants cause a lot of destruction on plantations when they pass through and the workers have killed them in the past to protect their livelihoods,” says Aaron.

“It’s heartbreaking to see and study. I’ve been filming elephants in Africa and Asia for nearly a decade and this animal faces so many threats around the world. Along with losing their homes, they’re shot simply for eating, or for their ivory or skin. It’s a dire situation.”

Is palm oil bad?

As with most conservation issues, it’s hard to say whether palm oil is bad overall. While it certainly has negative impacts on the environment, palm oil alternatives are often a lot worse.

One particular benefit of palm oil, compared to other options, is that it’s very efficient. Oil palms supply 36% of the world’s demand for vegetable oil on around 9% of the land used by the industry.

Producing the same amount of oil using the next most efficient crop, rapeseed, would need more than four times as much land. This would probably lead to more habitat destruction and deforestation.

An oil palm boycott would also backfire on vulnerable farmers whose livelihoods depend on their income from palm oil. While a lot of the oil is produced by large multinational companies, around 40% of the land used to grow oil palm in Indonesia and Malaysia belongs to individuals and families. In other areas of the world the proportion is even higher.

Since the 1960s, these smallholders have been lifted out of poverty, with the new income paying for improved infrastructure in often remote areas. 

A boycott would also have wider consequences, as millions of people worldwide are directly or indirectly employed by the palm oil industry.

Palm oil sustainability

Following public pressure, scientists and industry figures have been investigating how to produce more sustainable palm oil. 

One way is to change how we grow the crop. Rather than packed monocultures made up of just oil palm trees, less densely planted areas with an understory of flowers or other small plants can help to preserve pollinator diversity while increasing a plantation’s yield.

We see even larger biodiversity boosts when areas of rainforest are preserved within oil palm landscapes. If these forest areas are larger than two square kilometres, or slightly bigger than Regent’s Park in London, research shows that they can support more than half of the biodiversity found in undamaged rainforests. They also provide stepping stones for animals travelling across the landscape.

“Connecting up these forest patches with wildlife corridors and riparian strips [wetland next to rivers] raises their ability to support species,” Jane adds. “This also provides additional benefits like reducing soil erosion and protecting carbon storage.” 

Linking up such forest areas also ensures that populations of elephants and orangutans can mix with other populations and stop inbreeding from setting in. It has the added benefit of helping to keep these mammals away from plantations, where they might end up in conflict with humans.

To help drive these changes within the industry, groups like the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, or RSPO, have put together guidelines for plantation owners. They’re designed to minimise the impact on local communities and limit losses of the remaining forests.

Governments are also introducing new laws to crack down on deforestation. The European Union, for instance, has banned the use of palm oil and other products that have caused the loss or damage of forests.

While the effects of these changes are yet to be seen, rainforest losses continue to mount, as does the demand for palm oil. There are no easy answers to resolve the issues surrounding this vital product. We need a mixture of diplomatic, social and environmental action to provide the best outcome for people and the planet.

How to find sustainable palm oil products

To find out if the palm oil in a product has been certified by the RSPO, look for the RSPO Trademark on its packaging. This shows that the producers have signed up to pledges like zero deforestation in producing their palm oil, as well as many other social and environmental commitments.

There are also a variety of apps, such as PalmOil Scan, which you can use to scan the barcode of supermarket items to check how sustainably they’ve been produced.

You can also search the RSPO's website to find products that only contain certified sustainable palm oil.