Why Palm Oil Free is Important

Here at OmMade Organic Skincare we pride ourselves on being 100% Palm Oil Free.

You may have heard the term but what does it actually mean and why should we be looking for alternative options to palm oil?

What is Palm Oil?

Palm oil is made from the fruit produced by the palm oil tree. It's known as a vegetable oil and is found in many products on the supermarket shelves, from food to cosmetics.

Palm oil is used so widely because it’s cheap to produce. The crops are incredibly efficient and require half the land size of other vegetable oil crops.

Why is Palm Oil bad?

It may not cost us much to buy however, it comes at a huge cost to the environment.

Palm oil crops need the same conditions as our tropical rainforests. As the palm oil trade becomes more profitable, more and more rainforests are being destroyed. It's estimated that 300 soccer fields are destroyed every hour! 

The rainforests are burned down in order to clear land for more palm oil plantations. This devastates local indigenous communities and destroys the habitat of wildlife, threatening them to become extinct. Many are already on the endangered list including the Asian elephant, Bornean orangutan, tiger, Sumatran rhinoceros and Sumatran orangutan.

The burning of the rainforests also contributes to global warming as it releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

How to know if a product has Palm Oil?

Palm oil and it’s derivatives are found in 50 percent of all packaged foods in Australia as well as cosmetics.

We may think we are doing the right thing by reading the back of the packet however, palm oil is often listened using a different name. There are over a thousand names listed for palm oil or palm oil derivatives. The most popular name listed is “Vegetable Oil.” Other names include Palm oil kernel, palmitate and sodium lauryl sulphate.

The easiest way to avoid purchasing products that support the palm oil trade is to look for Palm Oil Free Certification.

The International Palm Oil free Certification Accreditation Programme (POFCAP) developed a Palm Oil Free Certification Trademark and Certification Accreditation Programme allowing companies to submit their products for assessment and if successful, certification.  

All of OmMade Organic Skincare products carry this certification so you can shop confidently knowing you are not contributing to this horrible industry and choosing to shop sustainably.

For further information about palm oil free certification visit www.palmoilfreecertification.org