Brilliantly put, thank you! You're so much more educated on the matter than I am and I appreciate your sharing all this!
Definitely choir!
But the issue isn't quite as straightforward as we may think ...... So while I don't use palm oil in my soaps, and I chose not to buy products with palm oil until there is a more trustworthy way of determining which is sustainable and which isn't, I do realize that that there are other angles to look at on this issue. Which is why I prefer not to judge people who've made a different choice than I've made. (But I do hope that talking about the issues will get more people to make an active rather than a passive choice, based on their own situation/circumstances.)
The first is to eleraine's point about small family businesses, who can only survive by producing palm oil, and who have no other source of income (or even prospect of another revenue stream).
And the second is related to the productivity of palm plantations - because I've also read that the "return" or yield from palm is significantly higher than almost any other oil. This means that for each acre of palm plantation, you'd need double or more acreage of any other oil-producing crop to produce the same volume of oil. So a complete boycott of palm oil is also not a great option, because we could see greater destruction of natural vegetation to produce rapeseed (canola), coconut or olive oil, for example. However, having said that, the reality is that farming of crops to produce many of these alternative oils could be undertaken in existing agricultural areas - which removes the threat of deforestation and loss of wildlife habitat.
Sent from my iPad using Soap Making