We have been making our candles out of palm wax, a combination of palm oil derivatives, since we launched GoodLight in 2010, and wanted to use our company as a platform to both educate western consumers about the sustainable palm oil movement, and show that a company can commit to sustainable palm and still thrive.
GoodLight Natural Candles
We are committed to sustainable palm because we feel like market-driven demand is the best, and possibly only, way of shifting the palm oil industry towards practices that don’t have extremely negative impacts on our planet and people.David Callicott, Co-founder, Managing Partner
Our commitment on the movement
Since roughly 40% of the world’s palm oil is grown by small producers who depend on the crop for their livelihood and income, supporting them on the path towards sustainability provides assurance to buyers and consumers of a deforestation-free supply chain, while having a tangible impact on people’s lives. It also allows GoodLight, which is a small company, to know that we are directly supporting other small businesses – the independent farmer – no small feat in the enormous global commodity supply chain that is the palm oil industry. And hopefully, our partnership with WAGS demonstrates how small businesses that depend on derivatives can still advance sustainability through the book-and-claim system. Another success story for GoodLight is our ongoing partnership with the Orangutan Land Trust. This will be our eighth year of contributing 1% of our gross revenues to the OLT to support the important work they (and their partners, such as the Borneo Nature Foundation) do on the ground in Southeast Asia – protecting forests, rescuing endangered wildlife, and doing community outreach and education.
Our success
After about eight years of purchasing GreenPalm and PalmTrace certificates from Sime Darby to cover our annual derivative usage, we found that we could instead purchase our book-and-claim certificates from WAGS (Wild Asia Group Scheme), a social enterprise working to promote sustainable palm oil production among small producers. Wild Asia supports smallholders by delivering on-the-ground support for the implementation of localized methods and approaches that can lower the cost of production, increase the number of economic crops, as well as help these small producers meet RSPO certification requirements, ensuring that the small producers’ plots of land will be sustainably managed.
Our struggle
We have used the RSPO PalmTrace (or GreenPalm) book-and-claim system since we launched GoodLight in 2010, so we started with sustainability, we didn’t move to it.
Our next steps
We are hopeful that eventually the sustainable supply chain will include derivatives so that we can move to direct, IP sourcing.
Join us!
It is great to see organisations coming together in support of a fully sustainable palm oil supply chain in Europe.
Are you committed? Join the Sustainable Palm Oil Choice.