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Kellogg Boosts Funds to Sustainable Palm Oil Producers

<p>&nbsp;The Kellogg Company is using buying power to support, and expand, sustainable palm oil production.</p>

The Kellogg Company isn't yet able to buy and use sustainable palm oil, but it's doing what it can to increase the amount of sustainable palm oil being made.

The cereal and snack company will purchase enough GreenPalm certificates to equal the amount of palm oil it uses around the world until it's able to buy sustainably-made palm oil.

Palm oil producers that are certified by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil receive a certificate for every tonne they make sustainably. They then put the certificates up for sale on GreenPalm's trading site, and companies can purchase the certificates to support the farmers.

Kellogg, which uses about 0.1 percent of the global palm oil supply, says that a segregated supply of sustainable palm oil is not available outside of Europe, and the palm oil it does use in Europe is not available in a segregated supply. As GreenPalm explains on its site, "...palm oil supplies from different plantations, mills and even countries are intermingled at each stage of the production and delivery process. Under normal circumstances it is therefore impossible for palm oil purchasers to know exactly where their oil has come from and how it has been produced."

Kellogg said it will push its suppliers to increase the amount of sustainable palm oil they purchase in blended supplies, and the company will move to buying segregated sustainable palm oil once there is a "financially and logistically feasible" supply available.

While Kellogg is the first U.S. food company to buy certificates to over all of its palm use, plenty of others have put a closer eye on their palm oil supply chains. Just in the last year, Nestle overhauled its palm oil policy and strategy, Burger King dropped a palm oil supplier accused of causing deforestation, Seventh Generation bought enough palm oil certificates to cover the palm oil used in its cleaning products, Cargill started looking at its palm oil supply chain with the help of the World Wildlife Fund, and Walmart and General Mills set down goals to only buy sustainable palm oil by 2015.

 

Kellogg cereal - CC license by rynosoft (Flickr)

 

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