The WWF's Palm Oil Buyers' Scorecard, published on Tuesday, rates 132 mainly European companies. Twenty-nine firms received full marks, including 15 from UK such as Cadbury, Boots and Waitrose.
No company achieved that level in the last scorecard report in 2009. At the bottom of the 2011 list are big retailers like Aldi, Lidl and Edeka from Germany, which declined to answer any questions about their palm oil policies.
"In the UK in particular we see progress," said Adam Harrison, palm oil expert at WWF UK. "Due to several campaigns highlighting the damage caused by the rapid spread of palm plantations, companies see they are under pressure and respond."
But he added: "Although there has been some progress on sustainable palm oil, new commitments are simply not translating fast enough into increased use of certified sustainable palm oil." The report gives Unilever, the world's biggest buyer of palm oil, 8 out of a possible 9. The list of 132 major retailers and consumer goods manufacturers includes some from Australia and Japan for the first time.
According to WWF, palm oil is used in a vast range of foods and toiletries – often just listed as "vegetable oil/fat" in the ingredients. It is used an array of household staples, including bread, ice cream, soap and shampoo.
Palm trees grow in tropical regions, and tracts of tropical forests are often cleared to make room for plantations to meet export markets. In the major palm oil producing regions, Indonesia and Malaysia, it is estimated that almost one-third of forest loss in the past 10 years has been due to the expansion of oil palm. Palm oil is also used for biofuels.
Environmentalists regard unsustainable palm oil production as a danger not only for orangutans, elephants, tigers and rhinos in Asia, but also to the climate of the planet as enormous amounts of carbon dioxide are released when tropical forests are destroyed. Furthermore, in some cases it has been reported that local people have been displaced from their land.
"Palm oil itself is not the issue," Harrison noted. "The problem is how and where palm oil is produced."
To compile the new report, Harrison and his colleagues used publicly available information to examine each company's commitment to, and use of, palm oil certified to the internationally recognised standards of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO).
Set up in 2004, the RSPO requires members not to clear primary forest or any land that is valuable for communities and wildlife. In 2011, more than 5 million tonnes, or 10% of the global palm oil production, was certified to the RSPO standard. However only half of that was sold. The RSPO has been criticised by green groups for not including greenhouse gas emissions as part of its criteria.
The main questions for the WWF assessment were: whether the company is an active member of the RSPO; has made a public commitment to RSPO-certified sustainable palm oil; publishes how much palm oil it uses and publishes how much of that is RSPO-certified.
Palm oil has been used for centuries as a cooking oil in West Africa, before it was discovered that the oil palm grew well in the Far East. Its big bunches of red fruit are rich in oil that is a cheap ingredient in food and fuel production.
Consumption is increasing globally and is set to grow from about 50 million tonnes in 2011 to at least 77 million tonnes in 2050, according to WWF. Its use may possibly grow even more if the demand increases for palm oil as a biofuel. As palm yields more oil per hectare of land than soya beans, rapeseed or sunflowers "any substitute would need more land", says Harrison.
