Of orangutans & palm oil

When I first started making soap, I used palm oil in the recipes because most of the sample recipes in books and on the internet have palm in them. Palm oil is messy because it is solid at room temp so it has to be melted, poured and weighed each time. For that reason and that it didn't seem to help the soap a whole lot, I stopped using it several years ago.

Now there is an even better reason for not using palm or palm kernel oil or, at the very least, being extremely choosey about the vendor.

As a member of the Oregon Zoo, we get a quarterly newsletter about zoo happenings. It seems they are finally giving the orangutans new digs, which they have sorely needed since I was young. Beside that article is one that predicts orangutans will be extinct in the wild within ten years!

The reason for this is man's demand for palm oil. Palm is heavily used by the biodiesel industry as well as many other common household items. Massive amounts of rainforest in southeast Asia are being clear cut to put palm plantations in their place. And without that rainforest, orangutans are not the only ones who will suffer.