A new app promises to offer consumers greater transparency about manufacturers’ palm oil usage, helping to make purchasing decisions.
Social enterprise Giki has launched the ‘palm oil detector’ platform in its mobile app, that enables shoppers to find out if the palm oil in a specific product has been sourced sustainably, reports BusinessGreen.com.
Palm Oil Detector
The palm oil detector, launched in conjunction with the World Wildlife Fund, awards products a ‘sustainable palm oil’ stamp if they are certified by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil and also have a commitment to achieve sustainable palm oil across their supply chain by 2020.
In order to use the app, shoppers need to simply scan the barcode of a particular product.
"We want to make it as easy as possible for everyone to buy products with sustainable palm oil," said Jo Hand, co-founder at Giki was quoted as saying by BusinessGreen.com.
"We have analysed the palm oil procurement practices of major brands found in supermarkets and linked that to their products such that it is now easy to see which products contain sustainable palm and which don't."
Strict Guidelines
The Kuala Lumpur-based Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) recently adopted a stricter set of guidelines on palm oil production, including offering greater protection for land rights, forest protection, and labour protection.
"I hope that the rest of the supply chain don't duck their responsibilities... because a lot of the growers are taking a great leap of faith," Darrel Webber, chief executive officer of the RSPO, told Reuters.
© 2018 European Supermarket Magazine – your source for the latest retail news. Article by Stephen Wynne-Jones. Click subscribe to sign up to ESM: The European Supermarket Magazine
