Palm oil is in one in four food products that we buy. Most of the global supply comes from Indonesia and Malaysia – the only place where orangutans live.An estimated 1,000 Orangutans die every year because of deforestation to produce palm oil.
There are millions of hectares of degraded land available that could be used for oil palm plantations. Instead, many companies choose to use high conservation value rainforest land in order to gain the additional timber profits by logging the area first.
Unfortunately for the consumer, you can't tell if you are contributing to this destruction because the current food labelling legislation does not require manufacturers to list palm oil on product labels, so products are able to list it as ‘vegetable oil’.
We have a right to know if the products we are buying contain palm oil and are contributing to the demise of the Orangutan and our Rainforests. The United Nations has warned that Orangutans could be extinct within 10 years if we don't act quickly.
On Sunday the 16th of August, Elisabeth Crow (TBS Highpoint), Daniela Natale (TBS Northland) and myself attended the 'Don't Palm Us Off' campaign launch at the Orangutan Sanctuary at Melbourne Zoo. This campaign firstly wants to bring awareness among the public about the environmental damage and species extinction palm oil deforestation is causing, and secondly to petition for legislation to have palm oil labelled on all food products.
Watch the 'Don't Palm Us Off' campaign launch video.
The 'Don't Palm Us Off' campaign is pushing for Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) to change legislation to have palm oil labelled on all food products.
Sign the petition here to tell FSANZ that you want the choice! Legislate to label palm oil in all food products. Tell them don't palm us off!
Did you know?
• We share 97% of our DNA with Orangutans. You could say they are our wild cousins
• Palm Oil typically costs the lives of up to 50 Orangutans each week
• Over 85% of the worlds palm oil comes from Malaysia and Indonesia
• In SE Asia alone, the equivalent of 300 football fields are deforested every hour for palm oil production
• Orangutans could be extinct in the wild within 10 years if we don't act now
For more information, visit:
• Don’t Palm Us Off
http://www.zoo.org.au/PalmOil
• Palm Oil Action Group Australia
http://www.palmoilaction.org.au/
• Round Table for Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO)
http://www.rspo.org/
• Australian Orangutan Project
http://www.orangutan.org.au/
I find it amazing that we share 97% of out DNA with Orangutans!! Its sad to think that they may not be around forever.. We need to act now! We need too try and fix this. I just did a post on a company called Lush who are the first commercially available palm oil free soap base. I think thats a start and defiantly a step in the right direction!
ReplyDeleteWhy isn't the body shop advertising the effect of palm oil and why don't they have a petition in each of the shops for their customers to sign????
ReplyDeleteHi Sam,
ReplyDeleteThe Body Shop is involved in Melbourne Zoo's 'Don't Palm us off' campaign, which was launched in August last year.
In September 2009, we ran a campaign in conjunction with WSPA called 'Miracle Treatment' which ran from 12 Oct – 1 Nov 2009. The 'treatment' encouraged people to sign up to learn about the range of empowering actions anyone can take to solve the many problems orangutans face, such as deforestation and illegal trading. You can find more information on the Miracle Treatment website: http://www.wspamiracle.org.au/.
The Body Shop runs different campaigns throughout the year focusing on our different core values. As we ran a campaign on palm oil and orangutans last year, it will not be on the cards again for some time. Also this issue has now received a lot of mainstream coverage, and we try to focus on issues that are not in vogue, and we bring them to light through our in store campaigns. This does not mean we have forgotten the issue. We are still involved with the Don't Palm Us Off campaign and still strive to educate people on sustainable palm oil. It just means that it is not the current campaign in our stores at the moment.
I hope this information helps!
Rachel