Day 29 – Nestle, Give orangutans a break

I’m not a great one for activism. I should be – I care about the issues I talk and blog about, but I’m more the kind of person who tries to quietly make his point and influence those around me to follow my views if they so wish.

But the world would never become a better place if everyone were like me – or not at the rate at which it needs to anyway. Today there was a very successful campaign by Greenpeace UK which perhaps explains, a lot more radically, why I feel the palm oil issue is an important one.

With the slogan “give orangutans a break”, Greenpeace activists, dressed as orangutans, demonstrated outside Nestle head offices in Croydon and York. Nestle, maker of the KitKat, which I believe is the UK’s most popular snack, continues not only to use palm oil in its KitKat bars (though doesn’t have the courage to label it so) but worse still uses unscrupulous suppliers and shows no inclination to move towards sustainability.

The video below is from Greenpeace UK, and more about their campaign and actions from today can be found here

Great news already from the campaign is that Nestle are now rumoured to have dropped supplier Sinar Mas – the same company that Unilever agreed to drop on the day of Panorama’s programme earlier this month.

It really does seem that when an issue likes this gets a groundswell of attention that people and corporations will take notice. Whether it’s by making a quiet personal stand, by letter-writing and e-mail campaigns, or by telling everyone you know, it means that when there is greater exposure of the palm oil issue on occasions, the educated audience is bigger and bigger every time. We can win the battle to earn ourselves as consumers the right to an informed choice. One that will still give us great tasting bread, biscuits and chocolate, but that will leave a safer future for great apes and the ecosystems that both sustain them and regulate the planet’s climate.

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