Warren Campbell, general manager of 15Hatfields, explains how the venue is still striving to become palm oil free, despite some challenges.
Sustainability is at the heart of every business decision here at 15Hatfields – it’s literally built into the fabric of our venue. After successfully removing single-use plastic from our venue – saving tens of thousands of plastic food packaging items being thrown away, as well as preventing more than one million plastic water bottles going to landfill – we were keen to look at other initiatives to meet our commitments to the UN Sustainability Goals.
Last month, after more than two-and-a-half years of work, we were on the cusp of being the UK’s first palm oil free venue. On the face of it, that sounds a relatively simple task, until you discover just how many products contain this form of vegetable oil.
Thanks to its low production cost, as well as its versatile properties, palmoilissaidtobein50%of supermarket products, ranging from margarine to pastries, biscuits and chocolate to various cleaning detergents.
According to the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), the irresponsible production of palm oil has caused widespread rainforest destruction and wildlife loss, which has exacerbated climate change, and impacted the rights of local communities. Greenpeace also estimates that around 24m hectares of rainforest were destroyed in Indonesia between 1990 and 2015. It states that palm oil and paper companies are the main causes of this destruction. Increasing global demand for palm oil threatens more of the same.
There were inevitable setbacks along the way to achieving our palm oil free goal, as we conducted various audits on every area of our organisation, liaised with our supply chain and looked to secure numerous alternatives.
Then the pandemic threw further curve balls – particularly around our initial liquid soap alternatives
– yet, just as we thought we’d achieved our goal, we sadly hit an even bigger buffer.
Current challenge
Last month, the UK Food Standards Agency issued guidance that as the Ukraine conflict is affecting the supply of oils for food, palm oil may now be used to replace sunflower oil without this needing to be clearly reflected on the labelling.
So 15Hatfields and our suppliers couldn’t stand by our planned declarations that palm oil is no longer being used in any of the foods being served and consumed at the venue.
We’re great believers that pushing boundaries, influencing supply chains and setting a blueprint in which others can follow, should never be comfortable or easy. That’s why we will continue to seek to achieve our goal of being palm oil free in the other areas of our business – cleaning products and consumables.
Our mission to eventually achieve our palm oil free status also remains. We may not be able to currently say our food is 100% palm oil free, but we can confidently reassure event organisers hiring our venue and delegates enjoying events with us that 15Hatfields has made huge strides in this area.
We hope that by shining a spotlight on the palm oil problem to event planners, being transparent in our approach and offering clear guidance on seeking alternatives that other venues can follow, we can educate, de-myth, and create change not only in the way the sector operates, but among supply chains.
