Greenpeace Asks Nestlé to Give Orang-utans a Break

30 Greenpeace activists dressed as orang-utans urged Nestlé shareholders to “give orang-utans a break” and stop profiting from rainforest destruction.

Seriously – you gotta love Greenpeace. I wrote about the NGO’s creativity in an earlier post about sustainable seafood at Trader Joe’s. And now, they did it again. I mean, who else would dress up as orang-utans to attend Nestlé’s Annual General Meeting in Lausanne, Switzerland? The activists certainly got the attention of shareholders, Nestlé executives and the media. Some plain-clothed activists even got inside the AGM and dropped banners from the rafters. So what does Nestlé have to do with roaming, homeless orang-utans? According to Greenpeace… a lot.

Apparently, Nestlé terminated its direct contract with Indonesia’s largest palm oil producer Sinar Mas, which has a history of environmental abuse, after taking some heat from Greenpeace back in March. But I guess there’s more than one way to squeeze the oil out of a palm. Despite the company’s prior commitment to stop, Nestlé continued to buy palm oil indirectly from Sinar Mas, through suppliers like Cargill. Oh, and that’s not all. Nestlé also used paper from Asia Pulp & Paper (Sinar Mas’ pulp and paper arm) in some packaging for its products.

According to Greenpeace, in repeated conversations with Nestlé, the NGO emphasized Sinar Mas’s unacceptable environmental practices, including evidence that it destroyed rainforest, peatlands, and orang-utan habitat. Plus, Sinar Mas broke Indonesian law to make way for oil palm and pulp and paper plantations. Sad… very sad, because the Sumatran orang-utan just made the Wildlife Conservation Society’s 2010-2011 list of the  “Rarest of the Rare” only numbering around 6,600.

So what is Nestlé doing? Below are some of the steps the company is taking…

• Nestlé has reduced its use of palm oil by 42,000 tonnes over the past few years.
• Nestlé has written to its suppliers of blended palm oil, including Cargill, stating that it will not tolerate the presence of oil from non-sustainable sources.
• Nestlé is an active member of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil.
• Nestlé has pledged to source only certified sustainably sourced palm oil by 2015. We are working with providers of certified palm oil to increase availability.
• Eighteen percent of Nestlé’s palm oil has been covered by GreenPalm Certificates with a target of 50 per cent by the end of 2011. In Oceania, Nestlé had committed to covering 100 per cent of its palm oil usage with GreenPalm Certificates.

Let’s hope the company continues to move in a positive direction and holds true to its commitments. Because I’m sure many of us are willing to give-up our “KitKat break” to save these magnificent animals.

Follow Cindy Tickle on Twitter @ethicalbiz
Image Credit: Herbi Ditl via flickr with permission