We can put people on the moon. Surely we can work out where a tonne of palm oil is coming from.
With palm oil found in countless consumer products, from ice cream to soap and lipstick, an NBC report looks at the very real impact palm oil demand is having on Indonesia’s forests.
NBC reporter Ian Williams spends time with Dr Ian Singleton, whose organisation, The Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Programme, rescues Orangutans from forests that will be cleared to make way for palm oil plantations.
Williams also talks to TFT founder Scott Poynton about TFT’s work with Nestlé to help it transform its palm oil supply chain. The report explains how Nestlé has subsequently become a leader in buying palm oil responsibly.
Scott Poynton told NBC: “We’re saying to people, ‘We’re not stopping you from growing palm oil, but put it on land that’s degraded, that’s not forest anymore.’ We say, ‘If you don’t know where the oil comes from, then you don’t care, you don’t care whether the oil is killing orangutans.’ We can put people on the moon. Surely we can work out where a tonne of palm oil is coming from.”
