BUSINESS

The palm Oil-Sustainability Trade-Off

Business, Chris Catto-Smith, Published on 13/02/2013

» Oil palm is a remarkably efficient crop that provides the majority of the world's vegetable oil and generates valuable revenue for the developing countries where it is grown. Trade value is US$50 billion a year for the commodity that goes into about half the products on supermarket shelves (soap, margarine, ice cream, noodles and chocolate, to name a few), but palm oil has struggled on the road to sustainability. It is even a candidate for some UK power plants as a cheap but unsustainable fossil-fuel alternative.