InfoSAWIT, WASHINGTONS – Vegetable oil, particularly palm oil has become one unseparated component from many daily products, such as, food to non-food products, for instance, soap and detergent. Palm oil has been used and applied to many sectors of live but behind its popularity, there are some things deeper for us to consider.

In his blog, Bill Gates noted that the biggest issue is not in palm oil use but how to get it. Palm oil tree, which the origin was from Central and West Africa, would grow well in only five to ten degrees from equator line. This made deforestation practices until in the rain forests around the equator line to get the best spot to plant palm oil.

The process damaged not only natural conservation, threatened ecosystem but also delivered negative impacts for climate changes. The fire in the forests to develop palm oil plantations significantly made green – house gas emission while the damages in many peats released carbon kept inside.

“In 2018, the forest damage (fire) in Malaysia and Indonesia contributed about 1,4% to emission in the globe. The numbers were bigger than it in California and almost equal to aviation industries in the globe,” Bill Gates noted in his blog, Monday (19/2/2024).

But substituting palm oil is not easy to do. Its economic price, odorless characteristic, and abundant stock made it difficult to be substituted. Palm oil has semi-solid and condense characteristic that is enable to be applied for many. Palm oil also has longer storage because it functions as natural preservative.

But there has been more environmental alternative (to substitute palm oil). The company, for instance, C16 Biosciences, since 2017, has been developing vegetable oil from wild yeast microbe by having fermentation process that was not producing emission. Though in chemical characteristic, it is different from palm oil conventionally, oil that C16 produced, has fatty acid which is similar to be used in many same applications.

“This delivered hope that we would find more sustainable solution in vegetable fat which eventually would positively deliver impact for the environment and the sustainability on the earth. By having awareness of the negative impacts from unsustainable industries, the same innovations would be significant to encourage the future changes to be more environmental” he noted. (T2)