Palm | Kelapa Sawit

Unilever, "a British-Dutch multinational corporation that owns many of the world's consumer product brands in foods, beverages, cleaning agents and personal care products" (source) including Dove, Lipton, Axe/Lynx, Sunsilk, TIGI, and more, have made it an official effort to move toward sustainable palm oil.  The company has been recognized as a sustainability leader by SustainAbility's 2011 survey, and was awarded a Responsible Business Award in the High Performance category by the Ethical Corporation.  A large company like Unilever (and especially one that is such a large palm oil producer such as this one) taking this initiative is sure to strike up awareness and sustainable practices in other places.  Unilever CEO Paul Polman says that a big part of their actions will be to "change consumer habits to aid in conservation," reminding us that as consumers, we can have an impact on this issue as well.  In addition, Polman wants to bring this initiative to other businesses: "It is a very simple message: you can wait for governments and use it as an excuse, you can wait for technology and use it as an excuse, but there are many things we can simply do now, and that business can do now. And it does make good business sense. There may be a slight cost in acting in some cases, but I think they are the exception. The cost of not acting and the cost of failure is going to be far higher.”

See Paul Polman talk about Unilever's move toward sustainable palm oil, as well as its goal to reduce CO2 emissions: