To celebrate National Palm Oil Day, Universitas Trisakti together with Medcom goes to Campus to collaborate with Apical Group, a leading palm oil company in Indonesia with RSPO and WWF held a public lecture with the theme ‘Sustainable Palm Oil’ at Universitas Trisakti, on Friday, November 17, 2023. This event invited expert speakers including Mahatma Windrawan Inantha, Deputy Director for Market Transformation (Indonesia) of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, Angga Prathama Putra, Sustainable Palm Oil Leader at WWF Indonesia, and Salman as representatives from Sustainable Ethical Group.

In the public lecture, Mr Windrawan said the importance of creating sustainable palm oil production. Windrawan praised Apical’s decision to join RSPO, so the product that has been sold is already certified and guaranteed to be processed sustainably. RSPO ensures that the palm oil used is produced from sustainably managed plantations, processed, and packaged in a certified manner for consumers.

Mr Salman who spoke afterwards also revealed that Apical really pays attention to sustainability because it’s really important for the future. Meanwhile, another speaker, Mr Angga Prathama from WWF asked the young people can play an important role in making sure the sustainability of palm oil with social movements because young people have a bigger influence on the public. And if the market demand for sustainable palm oil is high, the producers will certainly produce even more massively.  

In the end, all speakers agreed that young people should start to care about the use of palm oil and everything that produces sustainability because now, climate change is really happening. With sustainable production, we could decrease deforestation in Indonesia like what happened in Kalimantan and Sumatra, and even improve the welfare of farmers. The public must be invited to change their mindset that palm oil is not wrong but the production method must be changed to be sustainable and start choosing products that are RSPO certified.