Contact RSPO

Help us encourage RSPO to make their certification and thereby overall mission and message easier for all of us to understand while we are where we can make our changes and make our impacts – in the supermarkets.  There are 2 sayings which are especially pertinent in this situation:

  1. Think global, act local
  2. Vote with your wallet

What this means is that you don’t need to fly to Malaysia or Indonesia and pressure their governments and palm oil production companies in person to make a change.  You’re considering the global implications of your actions and adhering those values to the way you shop in your local supermarket.  Whilst there you are telling the big corporations who aren’t sustainable that you want sustainable products, by purchasing a different product instead.  The round table on sustainable palm oil has the same values and has the best intentions in mind.  We just need to let them know that they can do slightly better by making their message easier for us to interpret and find when we’re out and about.

If you agree with the statement below please fill in your name and email address at the end of the statement and click send to automatically send that message to the decision makers at RSPO on your behalf.  If they get enough messages, we can keep pour fingers crossed that they may consider our suggestions.

RSPO

To whom it may concern,

I am writing because it has been brought to my attention that certification with RSPO does not necessarily mean that companies are completely sustainable and that a company which uses just some sustainably sourced palm oil products has the same certification as a company doing their best and using 100% sustainable palm oil products.

Can you please help us as consumers and reconsider your stance on how to certify your members?

I am not pushing for removing certification from members who use just a proportion of sustainable palm oil. What I am asking is whether you can provide different levels of certification so that I have the full information available to me at a quick glance without having to look through the annual progress report for each of your members. Perhaps a percentage can be added to the certificate or you can produce different certification levels? A recent study by the staff at Wingham Wildlife Park found that consumers were much more accurately able to see how sustainable a product is by having a percentage accompany the certificate on the product. This study can be found below:

http://winghamwildlifepark.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/The-Effectiveness-of-the-RoundTable-on-Sustainable-Palm-Oil-Certification-System-for-Helping-Consumers-Make-Informed-Decisions.pdf

I appreciate your amazing commitment to making palm oil a sustainable industry and hope that you may be able to help consumers such as us have an easier time of doing our part and committing to purchasing 100% sustainably sourced products and driving up the demand for these products. You need the support of the public to ensure that your accreditation stamp is having the effect which you need it to have and in order to gain the most support possible, it needs to be as easy for us to understand as possible.  I have seen some companies use logos which say mixed, followed by “contributes to sustainable palm oil” alongside your logo bearing the text; “Certified Sustainable Palm Oil”.  This is an ambiguous message which does not tell us how much (or little) contribution they may be making.

Especially when we are shopping we are bombarded from every direction with information about what is in our products, which products are cheaper, which products are on special offer, where else we can buy them… Please make your certification a breath of fresh useful air rather than becoming part of the modern day’s information smog.

Yours sincerely

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