Choose products that avoid or only use sustainable palm oil on your next shop

Why you're doing this

Palm oil is an extremely versatile oil that has many different properties and functions, making it very useful and widely used. It is semi-solid at room temperature so can keep spreads spreadable. It is resistant to oxidation so can give products a longer shelf-life. It’s stable at high temperatures so helps to give fried products a crispy and crunchy texture. And it’s odourless and colourless so it doesn’t alter the look or smell of food products. As well as being versatile, compared to other vegetable oils the oil palm is a very efficient crop, able to produce high quantities of oil over small areas of land, almost all year round. This makes it an attractive crop for growers and smallholders, who can rely on the steady income that palm oil provides. 

Palm oil continues to be a major driver of deforestation of some of the world’s most biodiverse forests, destroying the habitat of endangered or critically endangered species including orangutans, Bornean elephants and Sumatran rhinos. This forest loss, coupled with conversion of carbon-rich peat soils, are throwing millions of tonnes of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and contributing to climate change. There also remains some exploitation of workers and child labour. These are serious issues that the whole palm oil sector needs to address.