Greenpeace has insisted Hershey must advance its palm oil sourcing strategy and move away from supplies of the commodity certified by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil.
Earlier this week, Hershey announced a target of only using “traceable and sustainably-sourced” palm oil by the end of next year.
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The US confectionery giant said the move was “the latest step forward” in its palm oil strategy. Earlier this year, Hershey said it had achieved a goal of using only mass-balanced palm oil certified by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil by 2015.
Greenpeace welcomed the move as a “good step forward”. However, the campaign group, which has described the RSPO as a “so-called sustainability body” in the past, urged Hershey to go further – and said others in the confectionery industry had made bolder commitments.
“While Hershey’s commitment is a good step forward, it continues to rely on the RSPO to deliver traceable palm oil,” Areeba Hamid, forest campaigner at Greenpeace International, said.
“Hershey’s must explain to their consumers how they intend to move beyond the RSPO to completely break their links with forest destruction with a clear action plan and policy on No Deforestation. Until they do so, they lag behind other players in the industry such as Wilmar’s recent commitment to No Deforestation and consumer companies like Ferrero that have clear plans to move beyond the RSPO.”
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By GlobalDataHamid said the RSPO could not guarantee the palm oil used in Hershey’s products would not come from sources linked to forest destruction.
“In this system, the amount of certified palm oil passing through a particular supply chain route is tracked, but not the physical oil, which means that consumers cannot be guaranteed their Herschey products are free from forest destruction.”
