Shopping list
The Palm Oil Free Shopping Guide!
Only three vegetable oils must be labelled in food products in New Zealand and Australia. These are peanut, sesame and soybean oil due to some people suffering allergies to these ingredients.
All other vegetable oils can be labelled generically as vegetable oil, including palm oil. A good indication that the oil used in product is palm oil is when the fat content is stated as being more than 25%. It is also worth noting that palm oil is broken down into many derivatives and used in a large range of products.
Click here for a list detailing the range of names for palm oil.
Primate keepers Christine Tintinger and Courtney Eparvier are passionate about saving orangutans.
You can use our palm oil free shopping guide to help you shop rainforest friendly. Auckland Zoo's goal in producing this guide is to assist you to make informed choices when you shop. Please take a moment to read the information below to find out why we all need to!
Special note on dairy products – There is currently a lot of debate over Fonterra farmers (Fonterra being New Zealand's largest dairy product producer) feeding their stock PKE (Palm Kernel Expeller). We are currently working through whether it is appropriate to remove these dairy products from the palm oil free shopping guide. In the meantime, please make up your own mind if you are comfortable buying these products. On a positive note, we have been assured that organically produced diary products are still okay to buy, and have not been produced with the assistance of PKE.
Labelling
Labelling laws in New Zealand and Australia do not require palm oil to be identified and unsuspecting shoppers are unknowingly contributing to the destruction of rainforests and the decline of the orangutan and many other rainforest species.
Certified sustainable
There are some certified sustainable palm oil plantations, but only around 4% of the world's palm oil is certifiably sustainable and this 4% cannot be traced back to the plantation that produced it. Sustainable palm oil means rainforests have not been recently cleared and biodiversity has not been harmed. Currently, there is no truly sustainable palm oil available.
Unfortunately, certified sustainable palm oil is more costly than other palm oil and many companies are choosing the cheaper option. Demand is increasing at up to 10% every year, so it is up to consumers to put pressure on manufacturers to source sustainable alternatives, or prove they obtain their palm oil from truly certifiably sustainable sources.
At present, being a member of the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) – an industry led group, not an independent body – is still not a 100% guarantee that palm oil is from a sustainable source, but it's a start. Palm oil is quick to grow, cheap to make, and cheap to buy. This causes devastating effects to the environment.
Click here to find out more on the RSPO.
Helping you shop
Our Palm Oil Free Shopping Guide contains products known to be palm oil-free. We felt it more useful to identify products consumers could choose to buy rather than listing the many to avoid. We have broken the guide down into categories to make it easier to identify brands you like. It may take a little extra time to shop, but manufacturers will not change unless there is pressure from us as consumers.
This guide is a work in progress, with many product categories still to be researched and added. It will continue to evolve as we find more products that are palm oil-free, or contain certified sustainable palm oil.
Contribute to our guide
We welcome your help in maintaining this guide, which has been compiled by zookeepers in their spare time, systematically going down supermarket aisles checking labels item by item. As you can imagine, this is a lengthy process.
We have made every effort to ensure that to the best of our knowledge, this guide is accurate. Please feel free to help us maintain this guide by letting us know of items to add to it. Similarly, if we've got anything wrong, it's not intentional – please do let us know. Contact peter.fraser@aucklandcity.govt.nz
Happy shopping!
For more about orangutans, palm oil, and ethical shopping visit:
Click here to download our palm oil free shopping guide (pdf)
TIP: Print as a black and white A5 booklet - you'll save on ink and paper and it's a handy size to take to the supermarket!
