22/11/2009 (Guardian.co.uk) - A certification process designed to allow palm oil producers that meet environmental standards to label their products as eco-friendly was launched today.

The industry-led Round table on sustainable palm oil (RSPO), meeting in Kuala Lumpur, has drawn up the criteria which includes commitments to preserve rainforest and wildlife, avoid conflicts with indigenous people and improve palm oil yields.

The round table is made up of producers, such as Unilever and Procter and Gamble, consumers, and environmental groups such as Friends of the Earth (FoE) and WWF, which have criticised the rapidly expanding palm oil industry in south-east Asia for destroying rainforests and wildlife, and called for a moratorium on development.

Launching the certification process, Malaysian commodities minister, Peter Chin, accused environmental groups of harming palm oil's image, particularly in the UK – where it is estimated that one in 10 of all products sold contains palm oil.

"Using these [emotive] arguments, they often manage to pressure the rest of the supply chain towards giving support through the adoption of negative policies, as being the case with some major retailers in the UK," said Mr Chin.

Earlier this week, Sainsbury's announced a ban on palm oil from unsustainable sources in its own-brand food. It follows a move this summer by The Body Shop and Asda to cut their use of palm oil from unsustainable sources. Asda plans to phase it out from 500 products and has banned supplied from the worst-affected regions in Borneo and Sumatra. The Body Shop has pledged to use only sustainable palm oil in its soap.

Ethical cosmetics company Lush, taking on board environmentalists' concerns about so-called sustainable palm oil, is eliminating the ingredient from all it products.

"It seemed clear to us that the only way we could properly address the enormous problems created the growth in palm oil production was to cut our use of the material and encourage others to do the same," said Lush's head of creative buying, Simon Constantine.

The certified sustainable palm oil is expected to be available in the first quarter of next year. But FoE, which threatened to walk out of the round table talks after accusing the Malaysian and Indonesian governments of using the voluntary initiative as an excuse not to legislate to protect rainforests form the rapid expansion of palm-oil estates, says the certification is no guarantee that the oil is truly sustainable.

An investigation by FoE in the Netherlands linked several Indonesian suppliers, which were certified as sustainable, to illegal burning, habitat destruction and unapproved plantation development.

Hannah Griffiths, FoE campaigner said: "The two major problems with the RSPO certification scheme are that it is very difficult to enforce and it does allow some deforestation to take place. We want no further deforestation for palm oil production."

Malaysia and Indonesia, home to more than 4% of the world's rainforests, produce nearly 85% of total palm oil on 10m hectares of palm plantations. Greenpeace says that in Indonesia, between 2000-05, an area of forest equivalent to 300 soccer pitches was destroyed every hour to clear land for plantations.

Both nations have laws to protect tracts of rainforest against illegal logging but green groups say penalties should be stiffened, more rainforest should be locked away, and that existing laws are not properly enforced.

Yusof Basiron, the chief executive of the industry-funded Malaysian Palm Oil Council, has claimed that oil palm cultivation is not responsible for the destruction of rainforest.

But FoE says almost 90% of orangutan habitat has now disappeared because oil palm expansion. It warns that Asia's great ape could become extinct in just 12 years.