Awareness-raising by civil society is beginning to bear fruit, with plenty of potential in instant noodles and personal care

12/06/2023 (China Dialogue) - Remember, recently you got in the habit of checking the list of contents whenever you buy something? Thanks to that little act of yours, nature is already changing…”

At the COP15 biodiversity talks in Montreal last December, WildBound, a Chinese educational non-profit, launched a game about orangutans and palm oil called Forest Life.

Players, in the roles of ordinary consumer, palm oil company executive and small-scale farmer, generate varying impacts on orangutan habitats and biodiversity according to how they consume, invest and produce.

In recent years, Chinese civil society organisations have undertaken various initiatives to raise consumer awareness of palm oil. The commodity is not yet a public issue in China, with most people unaware of its use in their products, much less worrying about its sustainability. WildBound’s chief impact officer, Mingyi Lu, calls rectifying this “a long-term job.” She adds that, while challenging, “it is by no means impossible.”

Chinese consumers are becoming increasingly aware of the environmental and social impacts of their consumption choices, as the government pushes forward to its goals of peaking national carbon emissions by 2030 and reaching net zero before 2060. This is the situation presented in the Sustainable Consumption Report 2022, jointly published by SynTao and Jiemian News. Consumers in the 21–40 age bracket, who are more open to paying a premium and willing to share their experiences, are more likely to be guided by low-carbon messaging. However, the report notes that the great majority of sustainability certification and markings are not yet widely applied, including those for palm oil.

Palm oil is invisible to consumers

China is the world’s second largest importer and third largest consumer of palm oil. Imports were around 7 million tonnes annually in 2020 and 2021, mainly coming from Indonesia and Malaysia.

Despite high demand for palm oil, there is little demand in China for the sustainably produced, premium-priced stuff. Only about 1% of China’s palm oil imports are certified as sustainable, according to a 2020 report by the UNDP (United Nations Development Programme). While a WWF study in 2021 found that around 4–7% of palm oil consumed there was certified by the leading standard-setter, the RSPO (Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil).

The low demand is partly attributable to lack of consumer awareness. Some 80% of the palm oil imported into China is used in the food industry, but many Chinese consumers don’t know they are eating it. A 2018 consumer survey conducted by WWF Beijing found that of 5,000 respondents, 46% had never heard of palm oil, let alone its links to deforestation.

Palm oil is rendered invisible on the Chinese market by unspecific labelling. In the European Union, since 2014, food products must reveal specific vegetable oils, including palm oil, on their labels. While as the law stands in China, as in many other countries, the general term “vegetable oil” is enough. In addition, multiple derivatives of palm oil are used in household and personal care products, usually without any indication that palm oil is among the raw materials, leaving consumers in the dark.

How to make palm oil more visible?

Palm oil is not much discussed by the public. When initial concerns arose, they focused on health considerations. In 2005, an instant noodles brand advertised under the slogan “Healthier, not deep-fried”. This started to put the presence of palm oil in instant noodles onto consumers’ radar. Public concern, however, was limited to whether palm oil’s high saturated-fat content posed a health risk, with the ‘people’s health network’, an online information service run by the People’s Daily newspaper, noting that “while excessive intake of saturated fatty acids is not healthy, the body still needs them in moderation”.

The low level of palm oil knowledge among the general public makes it harder to reach consumers through awareness-raising and advocacy. As Mingyi Lu of WildBound explains, to attract involvement such initiatives generally have to be presented within the framework of biodiversity and forest conservation.

In 2020, RPSO and WildBound joined forces to launch Changemakers for Nature. Co-founders Isabel Nepstad and Songqiao Yao initially wanted to take young people to the Amazon to witness deforestation and experience for themselves the importance of protecting forests and biodiversity.

Due to the pandemic, participants had to learn instead through online and offline courses and then create their own impact-driven projects and solutions. The courses included knowledge relating to sustainable palm oil.  One of the participants, Yang Yang, produced a short film on the sustainable palm oil initiative, Behind the Shelves, which has been viewed over 1 million times across Chinese social media and video platforms, according to Changemakers for Nature.

https://chinadialogue.net/en/food/improving-palm-oil-awareness-in-china/