Blog

Five Reasons to be Optimistic

24 December 2019 | By Stephanie Lim - As 2019 draws to a close, and the “Decade of Delivery” between 2020 and 2030 beckons, there are plenty of reasons to remain optimistic for the year ahead despite the challenges. World Resources Institute (WRI) mentioned that Indonesia’s deforestation decreased by 60% between 2016 and 2017. Deforestation by the private sector has been on a downward trend since 2012, from approximately 180,000 ha in 2012 down to 50,000 ha in 2016.

Within Musim Mas, 2019 has been a year of progress in our sustainability journey. Here are five events and trends within Musim Mas that will make you feel optimistic... more

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How does Musim Mas monitor hotspots?

07 December 2019 | By Tiffany Goh, Editor: Stephanie Lim - Forest fires in Indonesia are common during the dry season, usually in July, August and September. Our Sustainability and Traceability team conducts daily hotspot monitoring across Indonesia and Malaysia via satellites, monitoring our own concession and our suppliers’ respectively. Together, our colleagues monitor over five million hectares of our and supplier’s concessions daily through satellites... more

Building a powerful relationship with our suppliers

15 August 2019 | By Carolyn Lim - With a few minutes to go before the supplier workshop begins, the supplier engagement team were busy greeting our suppliers, as if they were meeting old friends. These people came from operations that are located all over Indonesia... more

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Can there be multiple pathways for NDPE compliance?

08 July 2019 | By Carolyn Lim - For the longest time, the Singapore education system has been about a fixed pathway, that the only way to educate efficiently is to subscribe to a hierarchy of subjects. At the top are mathematics and languages, then the humanities and the bottom are the arts. The education system was designed to meet the needs of industrialism during the early days of the nation's independence. The problem is that not all kids can make it through the system... more

An Insightful First Step

15 April 2019 | By Tan Wei Rui - Two months into the industry, I was fortunate to be given the opportunity to participate in a learning journey organised by Conservation International (CI) to South Tapanuli, North Sumatra. Also on the trip were other civil society organisations and buyers. During the trip, we were introduced to CI’s social forestry programme for smallholder farmers and visited an oil palm Plantation managed by a fellow holding company... more 

Recapping 2018 in NDPE Implementation

Why we prefer group-level engagement to meet our NDPE commitments

19 November 2018 | By Carolyn Lim - Two years ago, we started preparing for our sustainability report. However, the internal inertia, given the workload of the verification for the Palm Oil Innovation Group (POIG), makes it very hard for our operational colleagues to focus on reporting... more

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An Origin Story

29 October 2018 | By Yos Kusuma - Palm Oil is the most widely consumed vegetable oil on the planet, being present in about half of all packaged products sold in supermarkets. The plant grows in tropical rainforests, which are typically rich in biodiversity... more

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No Small Matter

19 October 2018 | By Yos Kusuma - Meet the Field Assistant - they are fresh graduates, not farmers - but they are teaching experienced farmers how to farm better. They are part of an inspiring effort to improve the operational, and eventually, livelihoods of independent oil palm Smallholders in North Sumatra... more

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Fruits of Our Labour

11 October 2018 | By Yos Kusuma - All parents want the best for their children, regardless of their profession. Parents working in one of the most sought-after commodity in the world, Palm Oil , often have to work in the most remote of places. A research undertaken by UNICEF in 2016 sought to understand the impact of Indonesia’s Palm Oil sector on children’s rights... more

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Improving Access to Safer Water with Safe Water Gardens

03 October 2018 | By Stephanie Lim - Iswinarti was relieved that her three children and herself no longer suffered from chronic diarrhea since the wastewater system, Safe Water Gardens (SWG), was installed half a year ago in her house in Kawal village, Bintan, Indonesia. Her relief stems from the worry that 370 children die every day from poor wastewater management in Indonesia ... more