Palm oil
Relevance and scope
Almost half of all products in a supermarket contain palm oil as a raw material in their recipe. Foodstuffs and luxury foods with a high sugar content and ready-to-eat meals are particularly predestined for a high utilisation of the raw material. An increasing amount of palm oil is demanded and required all over the world. With this increase in demand, the areas required for the cultivation of this raw material are also expanding at the same time. Rainforests are primarily used for this purpose, which are consequently subjected to deforestation. This deprives the native animals, including endangered species such as the orang-utan, of their habitat and puts them at great risk.
However, substituting palm oil with other oil alternatives would only shift the deficits. The biggest disadvantage of these alternatives, such as soya and coconut oil, is that they are not nearly as profit-yielding. If more soya or more coconut palms were cultivated, even more land would be utilised than by the oil palm plantations. The only option that remains is to optimise cultivation and production in the palm oil sector by sustainable commitment, thereby bringing it into harmony with people and nature. The ZHG also wants to achieve a sustainable use of palm oil as a resource. The following statements apply to all articles falling under the responsibility of the ZHG that contain palm (kernel) oil and fat as well as corresponding derivatives and fractions in any form in the recipe.
RSPO
The "Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil", which is published under the abbreviation "RSPO", represents an organisation for common welfare, which has set itself the task of accelerating the creation and implementation of global principles for sustainable palm oil in order to reduce current social and ecological deficits. All RSPO members, regardless of whether they are producers, purchasers or users, are obliged to conduct their business exclusively with palm oil that is RSPO-certified. Certification can take place in different ways, as the palm oil supply chain can also be based on divergent models and is therefore traded differently. The following four supply chain models are possible:
IP (Identity Preserved)
This palm oil is one hundred per cent certified and therefore comes entirely from a sustainable source whose identity can be precisely determined. It does not come into contact with conventional palm oil along the entire supply chain.
SG (Segregated)
This is a type of mixture is made of sustainable, certified palm oil from different sources. In this case, too, there are no points of contact between certified and conventional palm oil.
MB (Mass Balance)
Conventional palm oil is mixed with sustainable palm oil from certified sources.
Book & Claim / Credits from RSPO
In this case, certificates are traded in the form of Book & Claim or in the form of RSPO credits. In this way, even conventional palm oil can give the impression that it is certified.
As part of our RSPO membership (ZHG has been a member since 2022; licence number: 9-483-22-100-00), we want to make global progress in these aspects.
Maßnahmen
Mittelfristig
Auf Grund mangelnder sich als geeignet erwiesener Substitute für das Palm(kern)öl und -fett wird – unter dem Aspekt der Nachhaltigkeit – zukünftig weiterhin auf diesen Rohstoff gesetzt. Hintergrund: Die Wettbewerber haben sich eine palmölfreie Produktion zum Ziel gesetzt. Alle derzeit bekannten Substitute sind jedoch zum heutigen Zeitpunkt nicht nachhaltiger einzustufen als zertifiziertes Palmöl. In diesem Zusammenhang wird versucht, mit Ablauf des Jahres 2025 eine hundertprozentige Zertifizierung des Rohstoffes Palm(kern)öl und -fett nach RSPO zu erreichen. Dieses soll mindestens aus SG-zertifizierten Lieferketten bezogen werden.
Langfristig
In Zukunft werden weitere Maßnahmen vorangetrieben, welche die allgemein vorherrschenden Missstände in Bezug auf die gesamte Palmöl-Produktion beseitigen sollen. Langfristig sollen die Möglichkeiten sowie deren Machbarkeit im Rahmen von Projekten erörtert und umgesetzt werden. Vorstellbar wären hierbei z. B. die Unterstützung von Forschungsansätzen, die sich mit Alternativen zum Palmöl befassen, oder eine Policy für entwaldungsfreie Lieferketten, um die Selbstverpflichtung in der Rubrik Palmöl voranzutreiben. Im Rahmen unsere RSPO-Mitgliedschaft (die ZHG ist Mitglied seit 2022) wollen wir an diesen Punkten globale Fortschritte erzielen.