Zoos SA supports the use of Certified Sustainable Palm Oil (CSPO) – where oil is produced in a way that aims to protect the last remaining habitat for wildlife and preserve the livelihoods of producers.
Palm oil is found in more than half of all packaged supermarket products.
Its unsustainable cultivation sees approximately six footballs fields of pristine rainforest cleared per minute, threatening orangutans and countless other jungle dwelling creatures.
The United Nations has warned that orangutans could be extinct within a generation if we don’t act quickly.
Alternatives to palm oil require even more land, which means more orangutan habitat cleared.
Encouraging a complete shift away from palm oil may push manufacturers to source alternatives such as coconut or rapeseed oil which can require six to nine times more land than is needed for palm oil.
It’s not always easy to tell if you are contributing to this crisis as palm oil is not always clearly labelled.
Food manufacturers are allowed to include palm oil as a vegetable on their labels. This prevents you, the shopper, from making an informed choice.
Zoos SA advocates for the proper labelling of palm oil and CSPO so consumers can make an informed choice.
The Palm Oil Scan App was created by the World Association of Zoos and Aquariums (WAZA) and is already in use in the UK, USA and Canada. Now Zoos SA and Auckland Zoo have launched in Australasia with an additional 10,000 products in its database.
Download the PalmOil Scan app and the next time you shop you can see if the products that you buy are made by companies that source certified sustainable palm oil.
By shopping carefully, you can make a difference for the Sumatran Orangutan, Sumatran Tiger, Chimpanzee, Binturong and more than 190 other species affected by unsustainable palm oil production.
If you’ve heard of palm oil, you’ve probably heard it’s bad for the environment. But the truth is it doesn’t have to be.
Zoos South Australia has recently joined alongside sixteen other zoo-based conservation and wildlife organisations across Australia and New Zealand to drive the global transition to Certified Sustainable Palm Oil.
The mission of the Responsible Palm Oil Network is to work with Australasian manufacturers to move to using Certified Sustainable Palm Oil and to introduce clear palm oil labelling.
We have been joined by a number of leading conservation organisations including Unmask Palm Oil, the Jane Goodall Institute Australia and New Zealand, the Zoo and Aquarium Association Australasia, the Borneo Orang-utan Society, Orang-utan Foundation International Australia, Orangutan Land Trust and The Orangutan Project.
In the BBC’s The EarthshotPrize: Repairing Our Planet, Sir David Attenborough looks at the catastrophic impact that unsustainable palm oil has on the forests that are home to some of the world’s most endangered species and champions sustainable palm oil. You can watch the entire Earthsot series here.
Supporting mandatory labelling of vegetable oil in Australia is an important conservation message and action that we can ask of our visitors. As consumers, we can decide which companies and products we support, but without clear labelling we can’t identify which products are made with Certified Sustainable Palm Oil.
The network will be calling on companies to source and use only Certified Sustainable Palm Oil as certified by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil.
For more information, read our Position Statement here.
Make informed purchasing decisions by using the World Wildlife Fund’s Palm Oil Buyers’ Scorecard which measured the performance of major retailers and consumer goods manufacturers.
Products with the following labels may contain palm oil:
Groceries
Chemicals that may be derived from palm oil
• Steareth -2, Steareth -20
• Sodium lauryl lactylate
• Sodium lauryl sulfoacetate (can be coconut)
• Hydrated palm glycerides
• Sodium isostearoyl lactylaye (from vegetable stearic acid)
• Sodium palm kernelte
• Cetyle palmitate
• Octyle palmitate (anything with palmitate at end)
• Palmalein, Palm olein
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