When you’re on the right path, good things often pop up as pleasant surprises.
Last week, I met an activist mom from CT who told me that RAN (Rainforest Action Network) would be at Pepsico World HQ the following day in conjunction with their palm oil campaign. She forwarded me an email from the organizer. I immediately reached out to find a way to be involved.
I’ve been a fan of RAN for many years, and I’ve been watching their palm oil campaigns for a good while. I’ve blogged about both Girl Scout cookies , the beauty industry and palm oil
The food industry has been increasing use of palm oil ever since the trans fat labeling laws kicked in. Palm oil is a shelf stable saturated fat. From a nutritional standpoint, it is certainly better for health than hydrogenated oils (usually cottonseed or soybean).
But when it comes to the environment, palm oil is devastating. Rainforests in Indonesia and Malaysia are being clear cut and replaced by big palm plantations. This clear cutting threatens the very small # of remaining orangutans with extinction. Just 60,000 of them remain, that’s all that is left on the planet.
Even scarier than the likely extinction of a fellow primate in the name of crappy food is the fact that rain forests like these act as essential carbon sinks for all life on the planet. Trees are the lungs of the earth. They transform CO2 into Oxygen. Forests are essential. Plowing down a rain forests for a palm oil plantation is a form of planetary suicide.
There is no love lost between me and PepsiCo. This corporation threatened to move all of their jobs out of my state if lawmakers in Albany passed even a 1 cent soda tax. Their products are not good for people or for the planet. One exception: Quaker old fashioned rolled oats. Nothing else. Their Quaker oatmeal cookies and “breakfast cookies” all contain palm oil!
That’s me in the monkey suit!
An opportunity to put on an orangutan outfit and pose for a photo op in front of Pepsi HQ? How could I turn such an offer down?
I met the RAN campaign leaders just down the road from Pepsi, climbed into the suit and off we went. Boy it was toasty hot in that monkey suit and not so easy to see out of the giant orangutan head. I posed for photos as the RAN gals delivered their Conflict Palm Oil Report to the Sustainability representative for Pepsi. The rep said they would “continue to dialog on the issue. Blah blah blah blah blah blah” Click click click went the cameras. Pepsi gal posing with the friendly Orangutan. Photo op complete. Pepsi looks great, they received the report from RAN with a smile.
Pepsi talking head receiving Conflict Palm Oil Report
That’s me on the right!
That’s when I took the orangutan head off and gave miss sustainable Pepsi gal a piece of my mind! I let her know that I was not just a monkey model, that I was a nutritionist, local environmental activist and, most importantly, a mom who cares about her kids.
“Stripping a rainforest so you can have cheap palm oil to put in your oatmeal cookies is really not unacceptable”, I said. “Your corporation has blood on its hands as you are driving an animal to extinction. You’re also bringing all of us closer to climate chaos. We need those rainforests if we are to survive the future. This is no joking matter.”
I think it was embodying the costume of an orangutan that created that courageous outburst. The look on the Pepsi talking head’s face was incredulous. For me it was a priceless, bucket list type of experience. I realized I had become a voice of those who could not speak for themselves. It felt really good to push the edge.
YOU can help by getting involved!
Learn more about palm oil snack food by clicking here: http://ran.org/palm-oil
And if you want to have some fun, consider having a sticker event.
Stick it to America’s biggest snack food companies! RAN will send you stickers and their website will show you all you need to know to hold a sticker action!
