When you buy, for example, soap, what ingredients do you look for instead?

I avoid palm oil in foods for the simple reason I don't consider anything made with palm oil to be a "whole" food. But I've never known what to do about other products like soap.

P.S. To bystanders, you may think your soaps don't contain palm oil. Check for anything like "lauryl sulfate". That's (probably) palm oil.

Soap is really tricky. The realistic alternatives at a commercial scale are coconut oil (but coconuts take twice the land to grow, compared to palm kernels) or animal fat (which you may not want in your soap). Sustainably sourced palm oil is probably the best option for soap making.

Also olive oil.

I thought they only made soap like that in the movie Fight Club...

Got any links? This sounds fascinating.

Sorry, I was just being a smartass :p

Sounded like a great gag gift for Christmas haha

On a related note, we really should be considering how much soap/detergents we really need. Not just deforestation, they are a major part of water and soil pollution. P&G, Uniliver et al. really sold the idea of using A LOT of soaps to everyone.

My parents, born in India in late 50s, rarely had access to soaps and detergents growing up in the countryside. They are still very conscientious in how much detergent they use. It's a lot of bad habits that mega-corps have tried to push onto us.

That's an interesting perspective. I'm mostly with you- for example I wear things multiple times before washing them- but what about for bathing? Water just doesn't cut the grease & aromas.

It's really hard to do this - nearly impossible to cut out palm oil just by boycotting. It's a $60 billion industry and it's found in 50% of products on supermarket shelves (soap, shampoo, Nutella, Oreos, pie crust, peanut butter, Earth Balance, (!!)).

And it can go under so many names after it's been processed by the Oleochemical industry - https://www.ran.org/the-understory/palm_oil_s_dirty_secret_t...

For individual people it’s not hard at all to radically reduce palm oil consumption. I don’t think I eat any palm oil on a regular basis except maybe from occasional chocolates or restaurant meals.

Not eating Oreo filling or Nutella is just generally good health advice (if you want chocolate + hazelnut spread, you can buy ones made out of hazelnuts and chocolate instead of mostly sugar and palm oil; plenty of available packaged cookies have little or no vegetable oil). Plenty of available peanut butter has nothing but “peanuts” as an ingredient. Make your own pie crust using flour and butter (or lard). Etc.

Avoiding palm oil in soap/shampoo is harder; best first step is probably to reduce soap consumption. Most people use way more soap than necessary, way more often than necessary.

Dr Bronner's bar soap uses palm oil grown sustainably in Ghana (according to them): https://www.drbronner.com/media-center/press-release/dr-bron...

Their liquid soap doesn't contain palm oil.

Is that the soap with the weird cult-ish text plastered all over their packaging? (Great for reading on the toilet, lol)

You can buy Aleppo soap or something with similar ingredients. We use several soap products that are based on olive oil.

Likely big companies do this because there are enough of people like you out there who vote with their wallets, so I think you succeeded, congrats and thanks!

I'm more inclined to believe that it's the media causing negative PR for the companies. Brand image is everything to big companies so a slew of media attacks around a particular topic will often cause the company to change tactics.

I know some people disapprove of it as a tactic, but I think it's been shown more than once that Greenpeace's shaming campaigns can be quite effective.

that's also just an attempt to generate negative publicity though.

True. Single most important factor that brings changes to any publicly traded company direction is revenue growth.

Unless you're a government-entitled monopoly (in the US: ISPs). Then it doesn't matter what anyone says about you (the company), and 'voting with your wallet' means you (the consumer/citizen) go without a crucial utility.

Or you can start your own utility and be the change you want to see in the world. A lifestyle business does not appear to be out of reach for those with some technical skills and a modest budget[0]. [0] https://startyourownisp.com/

I've considered doing this in the past. You need more than a modest budget to maintain such a system, especially if you plan to sell service (and, inherently, support). It seems like it would be a full time job.

In addition, you still rely on those monopolies to provide you with the utility: https://startyourownisp.com/posts/fiber-provider/

Since it sounds like you've researched this, what are more sustainable alternatives that you've found? Or open to anyone else's findings, too.

Palm oil is largely used for three things:

(1) as a feedstock for making surfactants in personal cleaners (shampoos, toothpaste, bath gel) like sodium laureth sulfate [1]; (2) as a substitute for partially hydrogenated vegetable oils (incl. trans fats) in food manufacturing; partial hydrogenation of vegetable oils (containing unsaturated fatty acids) will alter their melting point and texture to produce solid-at-room-temp shortening; and (3) as a cooking oil. Lately, it has also seen some use in biodiesel.

To replace palm oil in surfactants, you can use coconut oil (which is even more intensive to produce), or by synthesizing the precursors from mined hydrocarbons (typically oil or natural gas) using a variety of clever chemical reactions; or lard from animals, which requires raising animals.

To replace palm oil in food manufacturing, you can use coconut oil, lard, or you can partially hydrogenate unsaturated fatty acids derived from many vegetable oils; by doing the latter you're converting some of your product into trans fat.

To replace palm oil in cooking, choose from a variety of other oils and fats.

Unfortunately, almost all of the European and US consumption is for manufacturing, while elsewhere it's used for cooking as well. While European and US suppliers do own palm oil plantations, they also source from other producers. This complicates the market: boycotts against big manufacturers of soap or food will drive the price of palm oil lower, increasing the likelihood that it will be offloaded to a different set of countries as cheap cooking oil.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodecanol

> I switched off products that use palm oil a while back

Do you have any reliable resources on how to do this? I would like to, but I'm always dubious of the resources I find, since they seem to be biased. Not that I don't trust their information, but I just have a hard time verifying it.

I just go by the labels. If the labels aren't reliable, then I'd have problems. I tend to think they are reliable because of people with allergies, but I suppose it depends on where you live and how much you trust your vendors.

I mean there is a chance I've got a product with wrong labeling. I just accept I have to trust other people or the labels to figure out if information is incorrect.

You are certainly correct in that we have to trust the regulators and vendors. I just don't recall seeing a label specifically mentioning palm oil, and I'm dubious about labeling requirements to begin with. Others mention that vendors may get away with including it as "vegetable oil" on a label, and I wouldn't be surprised.

You might also be interested in Buycott.

for food, read the ingredients, if it says palm oil or vegetable oil don't buy it

I'm relatively certain that I (in the U.S.) have never purchased any oil labeled as "vegetable" oil that gave any indication it may contain palm oil.

Is there oil labeled as "vegetable oil" that contains palm oil? Or is there another reason you think it should be avoided?

He's not really talking about bottles of vegetable oil used in cooking. He's talking about products that use sneaky labeling to either hide the palm oil or make formulation flexible- e.g. if the nutrition label lists "vegetable oil", they can make the product using whatever vegetable oil is convenient that day.

>vegetable oil

but what if it's just regular sunflower oil or something of the sort?

vegetable oil is generally specified by which type, since some oils (soy, for me) are allergens and could really mess someone up if they randomly eat the wrong kind. it would say something like "vegetable oil (one or more of the following: canola, soy, sunflower oil)"

Always assume it’s the lowest common denominator. Sunflower oil is more expensive so it won’t be that, if it was they would say.

What do you perceive as the benefit of not buying products that use palm oil?