SHOPPERS AROUND THE WORLD SAY ‘YES!’ TO SUSTAINABLE PALM OIL

International, July 18, 2013 -- The ‘Can You Live without Palm Oil?’ quiz was taken by 2,561 people around the world to find out how important palm oil is in their daily lives, and how their actions could affect the environment.

 

Using an animated graphical interface, respondents were asked to choose from a host of typical goods they have at home – from kitchen groceries to bathroom toiletries. This data was then calculated to show their individual level of palm oil consumption demonstrating that over half of the products that we use and consumer on a daily basis contain palm oil in one form or another.

 

Finally, respondents were asked to vote ‘yes’ or ‘no’ for sustainable palm oil, followed by an Infographics informing consumers of their role in supporting sustainable palm oil http://www.rspo.org/en/support_cspo_instead. Three-quarters of those questioned gave a positive result.

 

The top 10 countries with the highest number of respondents were from: the USA (22%); the UK (20%); Australia (12%); Singapore (11%); Germany, Malaysia, Denmark, the Netherlands and France (6% each); and Indonesia (5%).

 

Fifty-four per cent of all respondents described themselves as professional; 37 per cent as students; seven per cent as homemakers; and two per cent as retirees.

Commenting on the results, RSPO Secretary General Darrel Webber said: “While this was a fairly light-hearted way to gather information, and not a scientific survey, the quiz results highlight some clear views.

 

“On average, 50 per cent of supermarket goods found in most households contain some form of palm oil, a figure that was reinforced by the high number of people choosing such products in the quiz. Because palm oil is so pervasive, its impact on consumers, and consequently the world, is massive.

 

“But with nearly forty per cent of respondents being students, it’s clear that young people – who let’s face it are tomorrow’s major consumers – have a serious interest in sustainable palm oil. Add this number to the more than fifty per cent of respondents classed as professional and it’s clear that young, affluent and influential consumers around the world share the RSPO’s ambition of creating a 100 per cent sustainable palm oil industry, sooner rather than later.”

 

Palm oil is an extremely versatile vegetable oil with many applications. It is found in a wide range of items from confectionery, cosmetics, cleaning agents to body products. Palm oil use is rising globally, which is why the RSPO is at the forefront of creating a global sustainable palm oil sector.

 

The online quiz from which the above data was extracted is available at: http://www.rspo.org/quiz/. The quiz is hosted on the recently launched consumer website for the RSPO Trademark http://www.betterpalmoil.org/

 

The current estimated annual production capacity of RSPO-certified sustainable palm oil is 8.6 million metric tons, approximately 15 percent of global crude palm oil. Spread over 2.4 million hectares of certified area, about 46.8% of the world's current RSPO-certified sustainable palm oil production capacity comes from Indonesia, followed by 45.3% from Malaysia, and the remaining 7.9% from Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Brazil, Thailand, Colombia, Cambodia and Ivory Coast.

 

In response to the urgent and pressing global call for sustainably-produced palm oil, the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) was formed in 2004 with the objective of promoting the growth and use of sustainable oil palm products through credible global standards and engagement of stakeholders. The seat of the association is in Zurich, Switzerland, while the secretariat is currently based in Kuala Lumpur with a satellite office in Jakarta.

 

RSPO is a not-for-profit association that unites stakeholders from seven sectors of the palm oil industry - oil palm producers, palm oil processors or traders, consumer goods manufacturers, retailers, banks and investors, environmental or nature conservation NGOs and social or developmental NGOs - to develop and implement global standards for sustainable palm oil.

 

Such multi-stakeholder representation is mirrored in the governance structure of RSPO such that seats in the Executive Board and project-level Working Groups are fairly allocated to each sector. In this way, RSPO lives out the philosophy of the "roundtable" by giving equal rights to each stakeholder group to bring group-specific agendas to the roundtable, facilitating traditionally adversarial stakeholders and business competitors to work together towards a common objective and make decisions by consensus.