Sam's Club just brought in a Task Chair from Qianglong Seating claiming on the packaging that they care about the environment and have used a Palm Oil content cushion. As always on Easy Going Green, I want to make sure to keep you informed of the environmental controversies surrounding new materials and also strive fror transparency in claims to consumers. There are people researching these materials and the claims surrounding them in every industry.
No place on the packaging does it say what percentage of Palm Oil is used in the cushion, and at the time of this posting, no floor sample was available to review the law label content. I will post a comment when I find out. Typically with soy and other alternative oil cushion the percentage is always under 50%. Research has shown that those consumers actively looking for Green products are very skeptical of vague Green claims and expect that full information will exist somewhere on a hangtag or the box. Absence of the disclosure makes them less likely to buy versus a non-Green product so they can avoid feeling duped. So, if you have a real claim, spell it out, get some credit!
But onto the controversy...with widespread deforestation going on in many countries converting to "food for fuel crops" and palm oil production at about 28 million tons per year, the second largest crop after soybeans, environmentalists are concerned about insuring sustainable production. Palm oil has the highest yield per
hectare than any oil or oil seed crop and can only be cultivated in tropical areas of
Asia, Africa and South America. Since the 1990s, palm oil cultivation had increased by about 43%, most in Malaysia and Indonesia now the world's largest producers of palm
oil. New plantations have resulted in
the conversion of large areas of forests with high conservation value
threatening the rich biodiversity. There is also a use of
fire for preparation of land for oil palm planting contributing to the problem of forest fires and leaving large areas of land without any forestation to help with carbon capture. The
expansion of oil palm plantations have also given rise to social
conflicts as well and threaten the economic growth of the people in those regions.
There are groups such as the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) working on programs similar to FSC that would certify the production and insure that products produced are truely Palm Green with full traceability and transparency. I am not a big proponent of these certification programs, but the protocol they use should be a part of any retailer's QC and audit program. There is no excuse in this day and age for vendors to be ignorant of any part or source in their supply chain. Same goes for the retailers - in this economy no one can afford a Kathie Lee scandal.
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