Daily CSR
Daily CSR

Daily CSR
Daily news about corporate social responsibility, ethics and sustainability

The European Union To Put A Ban On Vegetable-Based Bio-Fuel



05/30/2017

The measures of the ban still awaits the approval of the European Commission.


Dailycsr.com – 29 May 2017 – Brian Collett has reported that the European Union is moving in a direction to put a ban on vegetable oils in “all biofuel”, even including the “palm oil”. The parliament members are urging for the “ban on the grounds” as they stress on the fact that farming of vegetable oil has proven to be disastrous for the ecology, besides violating “human rights” and hiking up the process of food.
 
As many as ninety seven percent of the parliament members showed their support towards the ban resolution as they “demanding a phase-out” of vegetable oils by the year of 2020. In order to implement the ban and take appropriate measures, only the approval signal has to come from the European Commission. It was about a decade ago that the E.U. chose “vegetable oil-based biofuel” over petroleum.
 
Talking about the shifting stance, Brian Collett wrote:
“Its stance shifted after reports that vegetable oil farming had caused rampant deforestation and the loss of a million hectares, or about 4,000 square miles, of tropical soil in countries such as Indonesia and Malaysia”.
 
Moreover, one needs also keep in mind that child labour as well as the exploitation of workers have been “linked” with the vegetable farming, whereby clearing of areas to prepare them for agriculture has also “destroyed forests” that were home to “endangered animal species”.
 
According to the calculation presented by one such studies showed that the “net result”, taking into consideration the forest and peatlands destruction, bio-diesel thus produced from vegetable oils were responsible for causing eighty percent more emissions in comparison to “fossil fuels”. On the other, some U.S. “opponents” have filed a case stating that the land usage for “fuel crops” is responsible for the rise in the animal feed as well as the cost of food. However, reported Brian Collett:
“Ironically, opposition in the US has created a common cause for environmental critics of fuel crops and oil companies represented by the American Petroleum Institute”.  
 
 
References:
http://www.ethicalperformance.com