Day 16: Alternatives?

If sustainable palm oil is more a hope than a reality, even with certification, are there any ways around the problem?

The short answer is yes, but –

Yes, there are multiple ideas, but many also require large amounts of land, such as rapeseed oil, or coconut oil, which while healthy could just become another crop to replace palm oil. Others are too costly to grow, such as shea oil, or require unsustainable products to grow, such as certain types of algae.

There are suggestions of developing a palm oil plant that doesn’t need to grow in the same tropical temperatures as tropical rainforest. So leaf oil is a potential, but this requires some genetic engineering and still has some way to go.

The real problem is that it is hard to find an alternative that has all the same properties which make palm oil so well-used. Worse still, palm oil is actually used in fuel! Which means even if I wanted to go completely palm oil-free, I couldn’t long term.

However, there are constantly new initiatives which still have the potential to find solutions. One example is Revive, which uses coffee grounds to make a product very similar. Thanks Shandin for drawing my attention to this! 

https://www.greenmatters.com/p/palm-oil-alternatives

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200109-what-are-the-alternatives-to-palm-oil