Orang-utans swing into action to stop Dove destroying rainforests for palm oil

Orang-utans swing into action to stop Dove destroying rainforests for palm oil: ”

Today, we’re launching the next stage in our
campaign to protect the rainforests of Indonesia from the expansion of the
palm oil industry. Our volunteers, dressed as orang-utans, are currently climbing
over the London
headquarters of the company behind Dove, which uses palm oil as one of its
ingredients. Our latest research shows that Unilever, the makers of Dove, is
buying palm oil from companies that are destroying valuable rainforest and
peatland areas, which is bad news not only for the millions of people who depend
on them for their way of life and endangered species such as the orang-utan,
but also for the global climate.

Right now, four ‘orang-utans’ are perched on a
balcony at Unilever’s headquarters in London,
telling passers-by why Dove is responsible for the devastation happening in South East Asia. Down below on the road, a giant
billboard mounted on a truck parked below apes (sorry) Dove’s Campaign for Real
Beauty advertising campaign, and huge speakers are playing jungle noises at top
volume. Meanwhile, at a Unilever factory at Port Sunlight near Liverpool, sixty volunteers (many in orang-utan cosutmes)
have overrun the premises, decorating the front entrace with a huge banner. The
factory makes Persil, which also contains palm oil.

Write to Patrick Cescau, group chief
executive, and tell Unilever to clean up its act.

Why Dove and Unilever? For a start, Unilever
is one of the largest users of palm oil in the world, funnelling up to one in
every 20 litres produced from Indonesia into some of the many well-known brands
it owns. This one fact means Unilever has a huge influence on the way palm oil
is made.

And being chair of the Roundtable on
Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), Unilever has even more clout. The RSPO is a group
of retailers, manufacturers and
suppliers whose aim is create standards for the production of sustainable palm
oil. But as things are, it’s little more than a greenwashing operation because card-carrying members of the RSPO continue
to be involved in the destruction of Indonesia’s rainforests. The RSPO has developed a certification scheme, but
as yet not a drop of certified oil is available, six years after the scheme was
set up. Even when certified palm oil becomes available later this year, there is nothing to prevent certified palm oil
being blended with non-certified palm oil. This will make it impossible for
RSPO members to guarantee that their palm oil does not come from recently
deforested areas. Just ask Unilever.

This
was documented in the Cooking the Climate report we produced last November and
Unilever featured prominently, but since then we’ve collected fresh evidence of
Unilever’s role in deforestation. Our latest report, How Unilever’s Palm Oil Suppliers Are Burning Up Borneo, details how some of Unilever’s key palm oil suppliers -
Sinar Mas, Wilmar, Sime Darby and IOI among them – are devastating forest and
peatland areas in Central Kalimantan. Not only are millions of people who live
in or rely on the forests for their survival being put at risk, but as these
areas are destroyed many endangered species are at even greater risk of
extinction, including Sumatran tigers, Javan rhinoceroses and orang-utans.

There are also devastating consequences for
the climate. As the forests and tropical peatlands of Indonesia are destroyed and
converted into oil palm plantations, huge volumes of greenhouse gases are
released, accelerating climate change. Indonesia is the third largest
emitter of these gases in the world, in large part due to the destruction of
its forests at the hands of the palm oil industry.

This is not great going for a company that
paints itself as green and responsible: Unilever’s website makes a great deal
of its efforts to be both environmentally and socially responsible, but when it
comes to palm oil the reality is very different.

We want Unilever to clean up its act, not just
with the palm oil it uses in Dove but in all its products. To start the ball
rolling, we’ve devised a three-point action plan for Unilever to follow:

1. support an immediate moratorium on the
   destruction of rainforest and peatland areas in Indonesia to grow palm oil;
2. stop trading with palm oil suppliers who are
   involved in this destruction;
3. pressure the RSPO to also support a moratorium.

Last year, we threw a spotlight on the
environmental catastrophe unfolding in Indonesia; now we’re at Unilever’s
doorstep, demanding that the company uses its power and influence to help bring
the devastation to an end. That’s why we’re currently swinging around on various
buildings up and down the country, but we also need your help.

Two years ago, we asked you to persuade
McDonald’s to stop buying soya grown in newly deforested areas of the Amazon,
and it worked, so we’d like you to do the same with Unilever.

Write to Patrick Cescau, group chief
executive, and tell Unilever to clean up its act, and we also have some snazzy banners for your website.

“

(Via Greenpeace UK RSS.)