Where does Colgate-Palmolive's palm oil come from? We have been working with them to find out and then support their suppliers to meet Colgate policy.
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Background on Colgate-Palmolive
Colgate-Palmolive buys palm oil and palm kernel oil (excluding derivatives) for production in the USA, Latin America, Thailand, Turkey, and South Africa. They became a TFT member in May 2015.
TFT’s work with Colgate-Palmolive
We have supported them to engage with 100% of their direct suppliers of palm oil and palm oil kernel, in order to understand the source of their supply down to the mill level. By tracing palm oil back to known mills they can better understand social and environmental practices at the plantations and smallholder farms the mill sources from. This will also help them to collaborate with suppliers in order to help transform the supply chain.
Next Steps
Over the next six months there will be in-depth conversations with Colgate-Palmolive suppliers regarding the robustness of their own responsible sourcing policy and implementation plan.
This includes their plans to achieve compliance with Colgate-Palmolive’s policy if they are lacking their own. They will continue discussions to encourage greater transparency with the suppliers who have yet to provide complete information on traceability to the mill level.
With the traceability information they have and will continue to receive, we will be able to support them to make informed decisions about which producing suppliers to support in transformation.
Through the partnership we will be able to contribute to supplier assessments and training in order to have a positive, tangible impact on the practices on the ground within our supply chain.
This direct transformation work is in addition to monitoring and ensuring progress of suppliers’ own efforts at transformation.
