By Courtesy of C16 Biosciences
With COP27 currently underway in Egypt, where nearly 196 countries are discussing solutions to the challenges of climate change, an American start-up, financially supported by Bill Gates' foundation, has just announced that its synthetic palm oil will be on the market in 2023. Here's the lowdown.
With COP27 currently underway in Egypt, where nearly 196 countries are discussing solutions to the challenges of climate change, an American start-up, financially supported by Bill Gates' foundation, has just announced that its synthetic palm oil will be on the market in 2023. Here's the lowdown.
In nut butter spreads, chips, in instant stock cubes... Its use is so diverse that palm oil holds the title of most consumed oil in the world, far ahead of soybean oil, rapeseed oil and sunflower oil. And if the ingredient, obtained from extraction of the palm fruit pulp with heat, has been getting bad press for many years, its consumption has not decreased at all in volume in recent years. Estimated at 75 million metric tons for the 2021/2022 period, a total of 67 million metric tons were shipped for 2017/2018, according to Statista. According to American start-up C16 Biosciences, palm oil is present in nearly half of the products on the shelves of American supermarkets. Its widespread use can be explained through its lower cost compared to other vegetable oils, allowing manufacturers to keep the prices of their final products comparatively low.
A planet at risk
Catastrophic, disastrous... Various adjectives have been used to express the consequences of the palm oil industry on the environment. Indonesia and Malaysia lead in terms of volume, providing 85% of the world's production, according to the WWF. The agricultural areas devoted to palm groves continue to expand: in 2020, in Malaysia, there were 5.3 million hectares compared to "only" 3.3 million in 2000. Oil palm trees like the same growing conditions as tropical forests. It is therefore not hard to understand why the controversial issue of deforestation is seen as one of the main consequences of the production of this low-cost ingredient. In addition to soil pollution, this form of agriculture also takes away space from certain species such as orangutans and elephants. According to the WWF, an oil palm plantation reduces the level of biodiversity by at least 90% compared to a primary tropical forest. The other impact of palm oil production is the increase in greenhouse gases. It is estimated that deforestation is responsible for 15 to 20% of this.
Is "sustainable palm oil" the solution?
Faced with these alarming facts, a New York-based start-up decided to envision a future, not where palm oil is emiminated, but where a new formula of palm oil could be produced without any harm to the environment and biodiversity. Since 2018, the company with scientific-sounding name C16 Biosciences has been developing a fermentation process based on food waste to produce a palm oil alternative. A precise selection of a yeast strain that drives the fermentation process to produce a kind of synthetic palm oil In 2020, this innovative company founded by a Harvard business graduate, a biological engineer and a doctor of physics was producing only ten kilos of its palm oil alternative per week, containing as many fatty acids as its model. But this was before the fame (and fortune) of Bill Gates came into the mix, when his foundation invested 20 million dollars to support the project.
And it's paying off as C16 Biosciences has just announced that its palm oil alternative is headed to market early next year. The company, which specializes in the development of oils and fats, was able to commit to this timeframe after achieving industrial production estimated at 50,000 liters of its oil, whichi t calls "palmless." Intended for use in a whole range of products, from food to household goods, the start-up has said that it may first come to store shelves within beauty products. It's not surprising that the commercial venture is starting in this department: according to the American WWF, as palm oil is also found in lipsticks and soaps, to name just a few examples.
