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Vegan milk brand milkadamia is urging the public to avoid palm oil as part of its Palm Spoiled campaign.
The company, which has always eschewed from using palm oil in its nut-based milk and butter, has released a short video as part of its campaign showing the environmental impacts of palm oil production.
“Demand for palm oil is destroying tropical forests at an astonishing rate of 300 football fields per hour,” the video states, “don’t be palm spoiled. Choose products without palm oil. That’s an act of genuine eco consequence.”
Demand for palm oil
milkadamia’s campaign launched in response to the growing demand for palm oil, which is predicted to double, and triple, by 2050 – with research stating 50 percent of good used daily in the U.S. contain palm oil.
According to the brand, between 1990 and 2010, Indonesia alone lost the equivalent to a forest the size of Uganda due to palm oil production, and, globally, 60 percent of land used for palm oil was directly converted from primary forest.
Fire hotspots
Environmental charity Greenpeace has also criticized sustainably certified palm oil after an investigation found food giants including Unilever and Nestlé were each linked to 10,000 fire hotspots.
It is also reported that between 2001 and 2018, Indonesia lost 16 percent of its tree cover – which released the equivalent of around 10.5 gigatons of carbon dioxide emissions.
‘An eco-obscenity’
In a statement sent to Plant Based News, milkadmia’s CEO Jim Richards said: “Palm oil is grown only where there was previously tropical forest – the continued burning of tropical forest is not now sustainable – if it ever was…
“Replacing the verdant and tangled abundance and swarming life of old-growth tropical forests with the dull monoculture of palm oil plantations – and especially using fire to clear the land is an eco-obscenity of staggering proportions.
“Forecasting a fourfold increase in such vandalism speaks to the greed and moral bankruptcy of the perpetrators and of those who enable them.”
You can learn more about milkadamia’s Palm Spoiled campaign here
