The Palm Oil Industry – Destructive or Sustainable? Defining Sustainable Palm Oil

Student: Henry Epling
Major: Environmental Studies
Advisors: Matt Mariola, Carlo Moreno
Palm oil comes from the fruits of the African oil palm and is an ingredient in half of all packaged snack foods and many other products such as toothpaste and shampoo. As an industrial crop, it has continued increasing in demand and expanded to take over nearly 40% of all vegetable oil production worldwide. The overview takes a look at palm oil production from seedling to your supermarket shelves. This chapter ends by taking a brief look into the sustainability of the palm oil industry. So, what does sustainable palm oil production even mean? I take a look into the history of the sustainability concept and follow up by building a theoretical framework on the three pillars of sustainability and sustainable development: environmental, economic, and social. I performed analyses on five case studies in order to assess the current and potential future directions of sustainability for each of these three pillars.

Henry will be online to field comments on May 8:
2-4pm EDT (PST 11am-1pm, Africa/Europe: evening)

Posted in I.S. Symposium, Independent Study on May 4, 2020.