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Palm Oil & Orangutans

Palm products are such a touchy subject and something I looked greatly into before I decided to use Palm Kernelate. I talked to people from Fairtrade about Palm Kernelate off sustainable farms. I looked in depth to where the company I deal with gets their product, and they assure me it is off plantations that have never been a forest.

Without actually flying to the farm and checking for sure, I am accepting their assurances.

I also had friends ring them with lots of question to check this was an honest company, and one I was comfortable dealing with -

So after lots of research I decided to use Palm Kernelate in my products because of the properties below:

Palm Kernelate is a natural salt derived from palm kernel oil, which is in turn derived from the kernels (seeds) of the oil palm.
Sodium Palm Kernelate is used in various produced soaps and cleansers. It is a 'surfactant', which means it helps make the product smoother and more 'spreadable'.

Function(s): Surfactant - Cleansing Agent; Surfactant - Emulsifying Agent; Viscosity Increasing Agent -Aqueous; VISCOSITY CONTROLLING

palm kernelate raises no health concern because:

• It      is not on any of GoodGuide’s lists of toxic chemicals which cause      suspected or recognized health effects
• It      has not been detected in human tissue or urine
• It      is not a high production volume chemical that lacks safety data.

The NZ based company that supplies me with palm oil has assured me that it has come from established, sustainably managed palm plantations, not the new, clear-felled plantations that are causing so much damage in South-East Asia. While I condemn the ecological devestation caused by non-sustainable methods of palm oil production, sustainable crops form RSPO (Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil) certified producers provide an income to millions of people, particularly in Indonesia and Malaysia. The WWF has released a video outlining the RSPO movement which can be viewed on Vimeo (link below) which makes for some interesting viewing on the subject.

The only way to encourage the sustainable production of palm oil is to support RSPO producers, so I will continue to make my products with RSPO certified oil and you can be happy in the knowledge that your house is not only clean, it didn't hurt any orangutans.