Palm oil is still mostly extracted from palm trees from plantations where rainforest is cleared. Mars and Nestlé actually wanted to distance themselves from such palm oil plantations. But it seems they are not keeping their promise.
Palm oil – the demand for cheap raw material is high. Rainforest is often cut down illegally and without regard for residents and animals to meet demand. Mars and Nestlé also still use the oil of questionable origin for the production of the sweets. The same goes for Hershey’s.
The goal publicly announced years ago of no longer purchasing palm oil from such plantations was therefore not achieved by either Nestlé or Mars. Both companies had set themselves the goal of only using sustainably cultivated palm oil for their products by 2015. The palm oil used by both companies is destroying the habitat of several endangered species such as tigers, elephants, and orangutans in the Leuser Nature Reserve in Indonesia.
A major problem why companies continue to use oil of questionable origin is that the production and supply chains are not transparent. Thus the Leuser area cannot be ruled out as a problematic place of origin.
It remains to be hoped that companies such as Nestlé and Mars will keep their promise and make their supplier paths to the palm plantation traceable. Nestlé now wants to try to only use palm oil from sustainably managed plantations by 2020, for which no rainforest was destroyed.
The rainforest action network accuses the two large companies of consumer deception – Nestlé and Mars would show great ambitions in public, but as soon as the goals were not achieved, they would simply postpone them and take no necessary measures to implement their project.
