Sustainable palm oil drive
Italian food and household brands are joining the global drive towards sustainable palm oil, with a rapidly rising number of manufacturers and retailers signing up to support RSPO certified growers.
GreenPalm, the certificate trading system that enables businesses to support the ethical production of palm oil, palm kernel oil and palm kernel expeller, reports an 82 per cent increase in member applications from Italy in the past 12 months.
GreenPalm operates the RSPO (Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil) ‘book and claim’ supply chain option.
The influx of new GreenPalm members from Italy coincides with a petition posted on change.org by Italian online food journal Il Fatto Alimentari (The Food Fact), calling for a reduction in the use of palm oil in Italy, both for health and environmental reasons.
Bob Norman, general manager of GreenPalm, says: “In common with most of Europe, businesses and consumers in Italy are increasingly aware of the ubiquity of palm oil in our everyday products and, consequently, the need for sustainable practices in the palm oil industry.
“The world’s palm oil consumption has grown rapidly in the past two decades and continues to increase as the global population keeps rising. Alternative oils and fats are more expensive, less versatile and require far more land to grow, and the investment required to reformulate products and ingredients would be commercially prohibitive.
“Put bluntly, palm oil is not going away. This means we have to work together to make sure it’s grown and produced in the most ethical and responsible way possible.
“We welcome petitions that show people are concerned about problems associated with palm oil production. Our role is to help tackle those issues at source, at the plantations and mills at the heart of the rainforest regions.
“GreenPalm certificates are traded between RSPO certified producers and end user manufacturers, making GreenPalm the most direct and effective method of encouraging sustainable production.”
