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

Posted by jamie — 21 April 2008 at 8:22am - Comments
All rights reserved. Credit: John Cobb / Greenpeace

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.


Update, 1 May 2008: Success! Thanks for all your emails and photos, because Unilever have agreed to help stop the destruction in Indonesia's rainforests - read the full story.

The sound system was only at Unilever's headquarters in Blackfriars, which isn't a residential area. I'm still waiting to hear detailed reports, but I think the Port Sunlight event was a much quieter affair.

web editor
gpuk

I think the action is an great way of making the point. Because we are saturated in images and words, using sound in this way is effective - as well as the strong image of apes up on the roof! Although I'd temporarily sympathise if anyone was woken up at 6.30am (which appears not to be the case, as it wasn't in a residential area) it seems petty to complain about a short-lived side-effect, considering what is at stake. People would be far more pissed off if they were woken by floods in their homes, which as we all know is already happening in many places - a direct consequence of climate change, worsened by deforestation like that we're seeing in Indonesia.

I'm not attacking you. Sure, I absolutely know how annoying it is to be woken up when you work hard. But will it matter in a year? In six months?
I stand by my opinion. What if you were having to bail water out of your front room at 6.30am? It could happen. That's all i can say.

Sorry Nick, from the wording of your first message I took it to mean you weren't in the area, but were speaking up on behalf of Port Sunlight residents. I hadn't realised megaphones were being used. But xini has a point that it's a one-off disruption which will hopefully have far-reaching consequences.

And thanks for taking part in the campaign - the results should be worth the early start :)

web editor
gpuk

You seem to have made up your mind to be angry, so perhaps there's nothing I can say. But really - I personally am elevating a negative impression of an organisation I don't represent, by giving my opinion?

My first message was written before I saw your second, so that contained a mistake - I accept that it was noisy where you live. Otherwise, I have not said anything against you but you seem to be taking it personally.

I see no point in arguing any further. I've had my say and so have you. Have a good day, I genuinely wish you all the best.

Nick, indeed we are working on the Indonesian front. Aside from all the activity in Sumatra at the tail end of last year, there was conference this morning in Jakarta to launch the new report. The Indonesian government does have a large part to play, but it's also keen to expand its palm oil industry so we need to tackle the problem at this end as well.

web editor
gpuk

Okay, I think we've established it's a matter of perspective. And Nick, I spoke earlier to Andy, one of our campaigners who was in Port Sunlight yesterday morning, and you're quite right. He said they quickly realised it was a residential area so they turned the megaphones down; it was something that was missed in the planning and a mistake because our beef is with Unilever, not those that happen to live nearby. Please accept our apologies.

web editor
gpuk

First off, we have a film (and a huge amount of discussion) on nuclear vs genuinely sustainable energy here, and a virtual city laying out our energy vision here.

To summarise though, the largest source of emissions in the UK isn't from electricity but from heat. Nuclear only generates electricity and won't replace the vast amounts of natural gas we use for heating.

We need a sensible system that will slash emissions from both electricity production and heat production - a mixture of efficiency, combined heat and power (CHP) and renewables.

We could be producing huge amounts of electricity from renewables (between them, wind, wave and tidal power could deliver more than twice as much electricity than the new fleet of nuclear reactors - and the renewables would be built more quickly). We could produce both heat and electricity from CHP. And, as you say, efficiency is vital (every year, we throw away more than eight times the amount of energy supplied by all of the UK's nuclear power stations combined).

It's political will that's stopping us.

Fair points on coal and unsustainable biofuels.

Cheers,

Bex
gpuk

The sound system was only at Unilever's headquarters in Blackfriars, which isn't a residential area. I'm still waiting to hear detailed reports, but I think the Port Sunlight event was a much quieter affair. web editor gpuk

I think the action is an great way of making the point. Because we are saturated in images and words, using sound in this way is effective - as well as the strong image of apes up on the roof! Although I'd temporarily sympathise if anyone was woken up at 6.30am (which appears not to be the case, as it wasn't in a residential area) it seems petty to complain about a short-lived side-effect, considering what is at stake. People would be far more pissed off if they were woken by floods in their homes, which as we all know is already happening in many places - a direct consequence of climate change, worsened by deforestation like that we're seeing in Indonesia.

I'm not attacking you. Sure, I absolutely know how annoying it is to be woken up when you work hard. But will it matter in a year? In six months? I stand by my opinion. What if you were having to bail water out of your front room at 6.30am? It could happen. That's all i can say.

Sorry Nick, from the wording of your first message I took it to mean you weren't in the area, but were speaking up on behalf of Port Sunlight residents. I hadn't realised megaphones were being used. But xini has a point that it's a one-off disruption which will hopefully have far-reaching consequences. And thanks for taking part in the campaign - the results should be worth the early start :) web editor gpuk

You seem to have made up your mind to be angry, so perhaps there's nothing I can say. But really - I personally am elevating a negative impression of an organisation I don't represent, by giving my opinion? My first message was written before I saw your second, so that contained a mistake - I accept that it was noisy where you live. Otherwise, I have not said anything against you but you seem to be taking it personally. I see no point in arguing any further. I've had my say and so have you. Have a good day, I genuinely wish you all the best.

Nick, indeed we are working on the Indonesian front. Aside from all the activity in Sumatra at the tail end of last year, there was conference this morning in Jakarta to launch the new report. The Indonesian government does have a large part to play, but it's also keen to expand its palm oil industry so we need to tackle the problem at this end as well. web editor gpuk

Okay, I think we've established it's a matter of perspective. And Nick, I spoke earlier to Andy, one of our campaigners who was in Port Sunlight yesterday morning, and you're quite right. He said they quickly realised it was a residential area so they turned the megaphones down; it was something that was missed in the planning and a mistake because our beef is with Unilever, not those that happen to live nearby. Please accept our apologies. web editor gpuk

First off, we have a film (and a huge amount of discussion) on nuclear vs genuinely sustainable energy here, and a virtual city laying out our energy vision here. To summarise though, the largest source of emissions in the UK isn't from electricity but from heat. Nuclear only generates electricity and won't replace the vast amounts of natural gas we use for heating. We need a sensible system that will slash emissions from both electricity production and heat production - a mixture of efficiency, combined heat and power (CHP) and renewables. We could be producing huge amounts of electricity from renewables (between them, wind, wave and tidal power could deliver more than twice as much electricity than the new fleet of nuclear reactors - and the renewables would be built more quickly). We could produce both heat and electricity from CHP. And, as you say, efficiency is vital (every year, we throw away more than eight times the amount of energy supplied by all of the UK's nuclear power stations combined). It's political will that's stopping us. Fair points on coal and unsustainable biofuels. Cheers, Bex gpuk

This campaign was three years ago now, but the point is that Unilever certainly weren't getting palm oil from sustainable sources beforehand.

About Jamie

I'm a forests campaigner working mainly on Indonesia. My personal mumblings can be found @shrinkydinky.

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