Palm oil
From Envirowiki
Palm oil is a food product found in a surprisingly vast number of packaged food items, including biscuits, soaps, cosmetics, confectionery, and "low-fat" deserts.
The Palm Oil Action group report that Palm oil is the second most widely produced edible oil, after soy.
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[edit] 1 Tropical forest destruction
Palm oil plantations are causing environmental damage in places like Indonesia and Borneo because of the high rate of forest clearing and peatland draining that occurs to make way for rapid expansion of Palm oil.
This is causing massive loss of habitat for endangered forest species like Orangutans, and is also a major source of greenhouse pollution.
[edit] 2 Industry
The growth of the Palm oil industry has recently exploded because of increasing interest and investment in biofuels.
A Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) has been established to try and deal with the problem. In 2007, a certification system was agreed, which was heavily criticised by environmentalists.
[edit] 3 Impacts on carbon emissions
One of the stated aims of using palm-oil based biofuels is to reduce carbon emissions by reducing fossil-fuel based transport fuels. Unfortunately, in practice this usually back fires. Most palm oil plantations are in the tropics, especially south-east Asia and new plantations often mean that tropical rainforest is cleared. As part of this process, large volumes of greenhouse gases are released, especially Methane, a highly potent GHG. The total emissions of the land clearing can completely offset the emissions saved from reduced fossil fuel use for 75-93 years of palm-oil plantation operation[1]. If a peat-bog was cleared to make way for a plantation (which is happening in Borneo, and other areas of south-east asia), much more methane is released, and the payback time becomes about 600 years.
[edit] 4 References
- ↑ Leigh, Amanda (2008-12-18). "What we've learned in 2008". Nature Reports Climate Change. Retrieved on 2009-01-12.
[edit] 5 Related Pages
[edit] 6 Links
- Palm Oil Action forest Information Centre
- Article "Why is Palm Oil replacing Rainforests?"
- Palm Oil, Gold or Greenwash? - Friends of the Earth Australia
