Lately Seventh Generation has become the first North American company in its industry to purchase sustainable palm kernel oil certification credits. What  does that mean? Palm oil (and its sister product, palm kernel oil) is one of the world’s most widely used vegetable oils–partially because of its usefulness in both food and non-food products–and can be found in more than 50% of the products you see on the shelves at your local grocery store. That high demand has made it more urgent to ensure that palm oil is sustainably grown.  As one of the key ingredients in Seventh Generation cleaners, palm kernel oil must be sustainable for Seventh Generation cleaners to be truly sustainable.

Seventh Generation has now purchased enough sustainable palm kernel oil certification credits to cover all of the palm kernel oil it uses in its products. In purchasing the credits, Seventh Generation is paying a premium to palm kernel oil producers that use more sustainable production and harvesting practices in order to help them develop programs and infrastructure to expand sustainable actions. The credits represent the higher price Seventh Generation is paying to palm oil producers for more environmentally-friendly palm oil and is a first step in eventually ensuring all of the palm oil it purchases is sustainable.

Seventh Generation has also joined the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil and will now investigate partnerships for sustainable palm growing in Indonesia and Papua New Guinea.

In the view of Deforestation Watch, whilst it is commendable for Seventh Generation as a responsible manufacturer of cleaners, it is incumbent on the corporation’s management to ensure that the credits are working as they were intended to be and are not just part of a marketing program spin.  It is pertinent to ask how much of the credits are skimmed off by the brokers who deal in such credits and how much of it filters down to the actual producers of sustainable palm oil.  In such a circumstance, Seventh Generation would have helped bridge the gap between true economic options and the intellectually deficient, economically absurd and morally misdirected actions of some parts of the environmental community ( such as Greenpeace and FOE) towards palm oil!  THE END.