Cutting Deforestation out of the Palm Oil Supply Chain – Company Scorecard

Publication date: 3rd May 2016

In recent years, the world’s biggest companies have woken up to the environmental costs associated with palm oil and the other commodities they buy. Nowhere are those costs more evident than in Indonesia, which has lost 31 million hectares of forest, an area almost the size of Germany, since 1990.

In 2015, Indonesia was wracked by the worst forest fires for almost twenty years. The disaster, the result of decades of forest and peatland destruction, thrust Indonesia’s plantation industries into the global spotlight.

Greenpeace surveyed 14 global consumer goods manufacturers with ‘no deforestation’ policies in place, including snack food, confectionary and personal care companies. We wanted to understand the practical actions that these companies are taking to implement their policies, and the impact those actions are having on the ground in Indonesia. Greenpeace International’s palm oil scorecard rates 14 global consumer goods companies, finding much more needs to be done to break the link between palm oil and deforestation.

The responses we received reveal there is a considerable amount of work to be done before companies have deforestation-free supply chains. None of the companies we surveyed are able to say with any certainty that there is no deforestation in their palm oil supply chain. Most companies are unable even to say how much of their palm oil comes from suppliers that comply with their own sourcing standards.

The companies reviewed are: Colgate-Palmolive, Danone, Ferrero, General Mills, Ikea, Johnson & Johnson, Kellogg, Mars, Mondelez, Nestle, Orkla, PepsiCo, P&G and Unilever.


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