Pesky Palm Oil

Palm oil is horrible and everyone should avoid it at all costs. The industry is linked to major issues such as deforestation, habitat degradation, climate change, animal cruelty, as well as indigenous rights abuses. These are the occurring results of clearing land in order to create oil palm plantations.

The World Wildlife Fund claims that an area equivalent to the size of 300 football fields of rainforest is cleared every hour for oil palm trees. Burning does a lot of this, which releases a lot of CO2 into the environment. This is a very large-scale deforestation, and every time a person buys a product containing palm oil, they are contributing to this deforestation, condoning it, even supporting it. As a result of this deforestation, a third of all mammal species in Indonesia are considered to be critically endangered, with particular focus on orangutans, which have lost 90% of their habitat in the last 20 years. If one were to actually look at the ingredients of products they buy, they would find palm oil in very many processed food items. A lot of times though, companies will label it as “vegetable oils and fats” or something similar, making it difficult to know for sure.

It is not the easiest ingredient to avoid, but there are almost always alternative options. Sometimes you might have to spend a few more dollars to get the same product without palm oil in it, but oil isn’t even healthy anyways, so you’d be doing yourself a favor. There are almost unlimited options of things to eat, and with a little bit of effort, palm oil can be avoided. If the palm oil industry started making less money, and eventually losing money, they would stop clearing land. Most of these big companies only care about the money. They could care less that they are wreaking havoc on the environment as long as it puts a dollar in their pocket. All of our actions have some type of consequence and it important now more than ever for people to become aware of that, and to actually implement changes into their lifestyle to benefit the earth as opposed to destroying it.

For more information:

https://www.rainforest-rescue.org/topics/palm-oil/questions-and-answers#start

Sources: http://www.saynotopalmoil.com/Whats_the_issue.php

Image: https://ensia.com/features/how-did-palm-oil-become-such-a-problem-and-what-can-we-do-about-it/

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