Sustainable palm oil

Over the last forty years, swathes of rainforest have been cleared to make space for palm oil plantations in countries like Indonesia and Malaysia.

Palm oil has many uses - from chocolates to cosmetics. Its production has displaced Indigenous peoples and threatened many animal species.

What is sustainable palm oil?

Companies, campaign groups, and consumers have very different views on what constitutes ‘sustainable palm oil’.

As a baseline, we argue that for palm oil to be sustainable, producers and their buyers must ensure that forests and peat-lands – two of the world’s largest carbon sinks – have not been converted to farmland for production. Indigenous land rights must be respected, among other issues.

Many of the world’s biggest companies already claim to use ‘sustainable palm oil’. This generally means that their palm oil has been certified by the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), the main accreditor in the sector.

The RSPO has, however, faced widespread criticism – from investigations into major human rights and environmental violations on certified farms, to accusations that it enables greenwashing. Campaign group Greenpeace calls the RSPO a “con”.

Even within the RSPO certification, there are a wide variety of possible approaches. Some options offer a stronger guarantee of the sustainability of palm oil than others. We explore all this and more below.

Other companies also market organic palm oil as a more sustainable option. Organic certification guarantees that the palm oil has not been grown using chemical pesticides or fertilisers, but it doesn’t necessarily prevent deforestation.

Can palm oil be sustainable?

In theory, palm oil has some major environmental benefits over other similar products.

Palm oil is an incredibly efficient crop; it requires considerably less land per tonne produced than other oilseeds such as rapeseed or soybeans. The RSPO claims that its certified producers currently use just 0.9% of all land for oil crops to provide 8.1% of all oil crop supply.

If used correctly, palm oil could, then, help to spare forests and other ecosystems from being converted to farmland, allowing their inhabitants to thrive.

In practice, however, this has not been the case. Demand for palm oil has soared in recent decades as consumption of processed foods has grown. The oil is also widely used as a ‘renewable’ biofuel for trucks, cars and industry. Despite dozens of initiatives to tackle the problem, deforestation linked to the sector in countries such as Indonesia has not yet slowed down.

So while palm oil can be produced sustainably, most claims about sustainable production risk greenwashing the sector’s widespread environmental harms. Many environmentalists would argue that we need to reduce the amount of vegetable oils that we consume, alongside improving production. Demand could be cut by reducing our consumption of ultra processed foods and cosmetics or stopping the use of palm oil in biofuels.

How does ‘sustainable’ palm oil certification work? 

The RSPO is by far the largest organisation certifying palm oil plantations and supply chains, covering around 19% of all palm oil produced. A voluntary membership organisation, it includes around 1,900 palm oil producers, traders, and major users such as Mars and Unilever.

Producers can be certified under the RSPO standard, which outlines a number of criteria, such as developing policies to respect human rights, and not causing deforestation or damage to other so-called ‘High Conservation Value’ land. The producers’ plantations are checked against these criteria by a third-party auditor.

In turn, companies that use palm oil in their products can buy through the programme.

There are several different ways that companies can ‘buy’ RSPO palm oil, some of which are much more rigorous than others. The most rigorous option is to purchase ‘identity preserved’ palm oil, which is traceable back to a single certified plantation.

On the other end of the spectrum, however, companies can also buy through the ‘book and claim’ process. Under this option, brands essentially use whatever palm oil they like, regardless of how it was produced, and then buy a RSPO certificate, with the money going to a certified grower. This means that brands could buy from companies causing major deforestation, but could use the RSPO logo on their products by paying for sustainability certificates. They would include the word ‘CREDITS’ alongside the logo to indicate that the palm oil itself wasn’t sustainably produced.
 

Is palm oil certification sustainable? 

Although RSPO dominates certification in this sector, the scheme has many issues.

In recent years, environmental and human rights groups have highlighted major problems on certified farms. In 2024, for example, research by the NGOs the European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights, foodwatch, and Guatemalan partner organizations suggested that RSPO-certified companies were producing palm oil on land traditionally used by the indigenous population, and that protests against land-grabbing had been violently suppressed by security forces.

RSPO reviewed allegations against the company involved and revoked all of its certifications.

Even where companies do comply with RSPO standards, its criteria leave major gaps and weaknesses. For example, certified palm oil can be grown on peatland, provided it was planted before 2018. This practice releases huge amounts of carbon dioxide.

Certification also does not eliminate the fundamental issues with this kind of large-scale monoculture production, such as significant pesticide and water use. Palm oil that is certified organic as well as RSPO will help address concerns on widespread chemical use.

Despite all these criticisms, we do believe that RSPO can indicate better practice when used right. A 2017 study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS), for example, stated that RSPO certification lowered deforestation by 33%.

At Ethical Consumer, we think for palm oil to be more sustainable, companies should use the most rigorous RSPO approaches, and transparently publish a list of their suppliers. 

How to identify sustainable palm oil

It can be complicated to spot companies using more sustainable palm oil. The best companies will clearly discuss the approach they take, and will have close relationships with their palm oil suppliers, on top of using RSPO and organic certification.

If a company is sourcing from the RSPO, it will usually display the RSPO logo on its products. However, it will use subtly different labels depending on the RSPO approach they have taken.

If the label says ‘Certified’, then the company has used the more rigorous RSPO approaches, and is actually sourcing certified palm oil for that product. If that label says ‘Mixed’ or ‘Credits’, it shows that they have opted for the easier and cheaper approaches, and that the palm oil used may not have been sourced from better plantations at all. 

These labels also only relate to the specific product on which they appear. A company can display the RSPO label on a chocolate bar in the UK, but have used palm oil from deforested land on a chocolate bar it sells in China.

Many consumers will be concerned about the approach that a company takes as a whole, rather than just the palm oil used in an individual product. By searching for a company on the RSPO website, you can download their most recent declaration, which will state what proportion of their palm oil was purchased through each RSPO approach in a recent year.

If this all sounds too complicated, Ethical Consumer’s ratings can help. We rate and rank hundreds of companies on their approach to sustainable palm oil. We look at the fine detail so you don’t have to. 

Ethical Consumer’s palm oil rating

In relevant shopping guides, Ethical Consumer rates companies for their policies on, and use of, palm oil 

Lowest ratings for palm oil

If companies demonstrate no or minimal commitment to sourcing sustainable palm oil, or have good policies but have still received serious criticisms for abuses in their palm supply chain, they will receive the lowest ratings.

Highest ratings for palm oil

Companies will score highest if they don't use any palm oil or derivatives. 

Large companies can also score some of the highest ratings if: 

• all palm oil and derivatives are certified by the RSPO, with at least 50% coming from Segregated or Identity Preserved supply chains;
• they list all their mills and producers; and 
• they publish an annual grievance list. 

They should ensure none of their producers are among those with the most inadequate ‘No Deforestation, No Peat, No Exploitation’ policies according to Chain Reaction Research in 2024. 

We appreciate that small and medium companies have fewer resources. We therefore expect fewer steps from them and place more of a focus on whether they are sourcing certified palm and derivatives, or trying to avoid using palm oil.