So why should we care? What’s the problem here? Well, palm oil, being so often used, it is one of the most polluting industries in the world! 66 million tons of palm oil are exported every year, making it the most commonly produced vegetable oil. And it’s in the cultivation of palm oil where the problem comes up. Cultivating palm oil takes up a lot of space: 27 million hectares of the earth’s surface are reserved to this activity (.25% of the earth!). That’s the size of 27 million soccer fields, or about the same size as Switzerland, Austria, Slovenia, Croatia and the Czech Republic put together. That’s a lot of space! And if you think we have 27 million hectares of earth up and ready for cultivation just floating around somewhere, well…

Sorry, but you’re wrong.

So where are we finding the area to cultivate all these palm oil trees?

We’re cutting down forests. Actually, most of the time, burning them (which already, impacts the health of the communities living nearby). Because of this, there is major deforestation in Asia, Africa and the Americas, but mostly Indonesia.

Actually, let’s talk about Indonesia; Indonesia is the biggest producer of palm oil in the world. One reason for this is that the climate is perfect: a lot of rain year-round, sunny and tropical. Another is that there is already a big culture for growing coffee: a lot of little local coffee farmers have now changed into palm oil plantations! But mostly, Indonesia is great for producing palm oil because of its many available tropical forests that can easily be cut down.

Cutting down forests causes many problems. One being that it takes away the homes of many animals (but we’ll get back to that later). Another big problem is that cutting down trees releases a lot of CO₂ into the air, which pollutes a lot… so much that in 2015, Indonesia surpassed the U.S. for the most greenhouse gasses emissions.

And it doesn’t just stop there! Because of all this deforestation, many aboriginals that used to live peacefully on ancestral lands have now been moved or simply pushed aside; over 700 conflicts over land and who it belongs to have erupted because of palm oil - in Indonesia alone!

But the most pressing issue, the one that is the main reason palm oil is so controversial, is because of the animals.

See, many animals live in those Indonesian rainforests… the same ones that are being burned down. When these forests are burned down, one of a few things could happen to an animal: it could get caught in the fire and die, or escape, have no home anymore, and die of starvation, or, especially if the aforementioned animal is considered dangerous, like a tiger, get shot by humans.

Right now, I’m thinking specifically about the Borneo elephant, the Sumatran tiger, and the orangutans.

Especially the orangutans.

There are only 70 000 orangutans left in the world, and more die every day. All three of these animals are already endangered, and now they are having their homes taken from them: 43% of the Tesso Nilo park in Sumatra, built to protect the Sumatran tigers, has now been overrun by palm oil plantations that have no right to be there, and are breaking the law by doing so - and also killing even more tigers, on the land that was made to protect them! Ironic, isn’t it?

A lot of palm oil is made into biofuels: 63% of it, to be exact. But with all these effects put to work, palm oil-based biofuels actually have three times the environmental impact on the earth that normal fossil fuels. If that doesn’t say something, I don’t know what does.

As Anna Clark, from the Cornish Life says:

“I’m not writing this trying to make you feel bad, or expecting you to stop buying anything with palm oil in it. But if we all are aware of this issue and try our best to cut down on our palm oil purchases and avoid it where we can, then maybe we can make a small difference.”

So next time you are at the grocery store and pick up a pot of Nutella, think to yourself: is a chocolatey piece of toast every morning worth the life of so many animals and the health of the world we all love, the earth we all walk on?

I don’t think so, and I hope you don’t either.