Critical commodities
Supporting sustainable palm oil
In 2008, Albert Heijn and Etos announced that from 2015 they will use only sustainable palm oil in their corporate brand products. Palm oil can only be produced in tropical areas and its production competes for land with tropical rain forests. Palm oil plantations take up a considerable amount of space, which has led to acres of rain forest being destroyed to make room for them. Now the Round Table on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), of which Ahold is a member, has introduced a system of certification. Members of RSPO agree to only use palm oil that is purchased from plantations where rain forest has not been cut down recently. Albert Heijn and Etos are taking this commitment one step further. They have pledged to gradually increase the amount of palm oil they buy from certified plantations and to only use 100% sustainable palm oil in corporate brand products by 2015. There is currently not enough certifiable sustainable palm oil available to achieve this sooner as the first plantations have only just been certified.
Most of our work on sustainable trade focuses on the products sold in our stores, not the ingredients in these products. However, for certain critical commodities, we are engaged in initiatives related to social or environmental issues. These commodities include cocoa, coffee, cotton, fish, palm oil, soy and tea.
For example, palm oil is an important raw material for the food and non-food industry and is used widely in products from margarine to cosmetics. As it can only be produced in tropical areas of Asia, Africa and South America, palm oil production competes for land with tropical rain forests.
Ahold is part of the Round Table for Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), which addresses the problem by cooperating with suppliers and stakeholders. We are a member of the trade and traceability working group of the RSPO. Albert Heijn and Etos have pledged to use only sustainable palm oil in their corporate brand products by 2015.
We are also members of the Roundtable on Responsible Soy (RTRS). This group is working to promote responsible production and trading of soy by creating a third-party certification program for suppliers. In addition, we are part of the RTRS criteria development group.
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