I heard this on the radio slightly before Christmas so it
isn’t super recent but I was thinking about it the other day and wanted to
share it with you.
I’ve written before about logging and deforestation and
the effect it has on both biodiversity and climate. Oil palm plantations are a significant reason for deforestation, they are used produce one of the main primary export within
the tropics and because of this great swaths of virgin rainforest are being
removed to create plantations.
There are other options however and a groups of scientists
in the University of Bath and University of York are working to produce a
viable alternative to palm oil from genetically engineered yeast. There are
many benefits for this project to succeed in an environmental sense as yeast
can be cultured across the whole world so there is no need for forest clearance
along with the fact that it can be potentially be cultured closer to the demand
source therefore reducing the effects of pollution from exporting the oil.
Hopefully they’ll be successfully and an alternative to palm
oil could be just around the corner
Check out the link
Thanks for reading!
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