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Greenpeace International published a new report on Tuesday accusing Mondelēz International of sourcing palm oil from "rainforest destroyers."
Palm oil is an ingredient in many of the company's popular products, including Oreo cookies, Ritz crackers and Cadbury chocolate bars.
The report comes a day after Mondelēz announced it has excluded 12 upstream suppliers as a result of deforestation practices. The Illinois-based snack food giant started its journey to sustainable palm oil in 2009 and committed to sourcing certified sustainable palm oil (CSPO) in 2013, according to WWF's palm oil scorecard.
Despite this commitment, Greenpeace said in its report that between 2015 and 2017, 22 of the company's palm oil suppliers destroyed more than 70,000 hectares of rainforest in Southeast Asia—an area bigger than the city of Chicago—of which 25,000 hectares was forested orangutan habitat.
Mondelēz gets much of this so-called "dirty palm oil" from Wilmar International, the world's largest palm oil trader, according to the report. More than 80 percent of Wilmar's palm oil comes from third-party suppliers. Despite adopting a "No Deforestation, No Peat, No Exploitation" policy in 2013, Wilmar has failed to monitor its suppliers across all of their operations to determine whether they comply with its policy or are destroying forests, Greenpeace said.
"It's outrageous that despite promising to clean up its palm oil almost ten years ago, Mondelēz is still trading with forest destroyers," Kiki Taufik, the global head of Greenpeace Southeast Asia's Indonesia forests campaign, said in a press release. "Palm oil can be made without destroying forests, yet our investigation discovered that Mondelēz suppliers are still trashing forests and wrecking orangutan habitat, pushing these beautiful and intelligent creatures to the brink of extinction. They're literally dying for a cookie."
Palm oil is the most common vegetable oil in the world and can be found in chocolate, baked goods, soaps, detergents and much more.
But its production, which involves clearing tropical rainforests to plant oil palm trees, is a driver of deforestation,
wildlife habitat degradation, human rights violations and climate change.
The report comes on the heels of Greenpeace and Iceland Foods' viral "no palm oil Christmas" commercial that was banned from UK televisions for being "too political."
Iceland's Banned TV Christmas Advert... Say hello to Rang-tan. #NoPalmOilChristmas www.youtube.com
Greenpeace is urging Mondelēz to cease ties with the Singaporean oil processing company.
"Mondelēz CEO, Dirk Van de Put, promised to offer consumers 'snacking made right.' But there is nothing right about palm oil that is produced by killing orangutans and fueling climate change," Taufik said in the press release. "This must be a wake up call to Mondelez and other household brands to take action and cut Wilmar off until it can prove its palm oil is clean. Ultimately, if big brands can't find enough clean palm oil to make their products then they need to start using less."
On Monday, Mondelēz emphasized its goal of 100 percent sustainability and transparency across the palm oil industry.
"Mondelēz International remains fully committed to driving change in the palm oil sector and today's actions against 12 upstream suppliers reflect that commitment," Jonathan Horrell, global director of sustainability at Mondelēz International, said in a press release. "We will continue to pursue existing and new initiatives that seek to drive effective change across palm oil-growing communities. The company understands that this complex challenge can only be solved through collaboration with all actors in the palm oil supply chain, from growers to suppliers and buyers, as well as local and national government and non-governmental organizations."
Farms with just one or a handful of different crops encourage fewer species of pollinating and pest-controlling insects to linger, ultimately winnowing away crop yields, according to a new study.
Up to half of the detrimental impacts of the "landscape simplification" that monocropping entails come as a result of a diminished mix of ecosystem service-providing insects, a team of scientists reported Oct. 16 in the journal Science Advances.
Monocrop palm oil plantation Honduras.
SHARE Foundation / Flickr / CC BY-NC 2.0
"Our study shows that biodiversity is essential to ensure the provision of ecosystem services and to maintain a high and stable agricultural production," Matteo Dainese, the study's lead author and a biologist at Eurac Research in Bolzano, Italy, said in a statement.
It stands to reason that, with declines in the sheer numbers of insects that ferry pollen from plant to plant and keep crop-eating pests under control, these services will wane as well. But until now, it hasn't been clear how monocultures affect the number and mix of these species or how crop yields might change as a result.
Aiming to solve these questions, Dainese and his colleagues pulled together data from 89 studies cutting across a variety of landscapes, from the tropics of Asia and Africa to the higher latitudes of northern Europe. They tabulated the number of pollinating and pest-controlling insects at these sites — both the absolute number of individuals and the number of species — along with an assessment of the ecosystem services the insects provided.
In almost all of the studies they looked at, the team found that a more diverse pool of these species translated into more pollination and greater pest control. They also showed that simplified landscapes supported fewer species of service-providing insects, which ultimately led to lower crop yields.
The researchers also looked at a third measure of the makeup of insect populations — what they called "evenness." In natural ecosystems, a handful of dominant species with many more individuals typically live alongside a higher number of rarer species. The team found as landscapes became less diverse, dominant species numbers dwindled and rare species gained ground. This resulting, more equitable mix led to less pollination (though it didn't end up affecting pest control).
"Our study provides strong empirical support for the potential benefits of new pathways to sustainable agriculture that aim to reconcile the protection of biodiversity and the production of food for increasing human populations," Ingolf Steffan-Dewenter, one of the study's authors and an animal ecologist at the University of Würzburg in Germany, said in the statement.
The scientists figure that the richness of pollinator species explains around a third of the harmful impacts of less diverse landscapes, while the richness of pest-controlling species accounts for about half of the same measure. In their view, the results of their research point to the need to protect biodiversity on and around crops in an uncertain future.
"Under future conditions with ongoing global change and more frequent extreme climate events, the value of farmland biodiversity ensuring resilience against environmental disturbances will become even more important," Steffan-Dewenter said.
Reposted with permission from our media associate Mongabay.