Say No to Palm Oil

We're Into Week 5!!!

Say No to Palm Oil

Hello Everyone – we’ve been meaning to do this blog for quite a while – it’s about Palm Oil and the damage it’s doing to the environment, particularly the rainforests and the animals who live there.

 

There is lots of information on the internet about how harmful palm oil is to the planet and we’ll put some links at the bottom of the blog. Basically to get palm oil which is found in lots of foods and beauty products, companies are chopping down and burning huge areas of forest to make space for the palm oil trees - which is bad for the environment (because we need trees to breathe and burning them is even crazier) and also because it destroys certain animals’ habitat.

In particular, Orangutans, Tigers, Rhinos, Toucans, Frogs and Lizards. I found this out by visiting certain websites which were aimed at children and watching videos online. If we keep destroying their habitats, there won’t be any place for these animals to live and they may even become extinct (and in not very much time at all unfortunately).

Using unsustainable palm oil is also dangerous for people because we need trees for oxygen and also, lots of companies don’t seem to be treating workers fairly or the people who live in the places where the palm oil grows. Huge areas are being destroyed and once the trees are gone there isn't anything left to replace them.

There are so many foods which have palm oil in them. Common ones are: Chocolate products, popcorn, spreads like peanut butter, biscuits, stock cubes, breakfast cereals and lots and lots of other things too. We were looking for presents to give at Easter but most of the Easter eggs had some palm oil in them (and it was hard to find ones that were Organic and Fairtrade too….come on chocolate companies!!!!)

Some of our favourite things seem to have palm oil in them…and that’s not fair. We’re really very annoyed about it!!! We want to change this, so here are some of the things we want to do:

1. Put pressure on the companies not to use palm oil or to have it from sustainable sources. We might tweet them, email them, ask the shops we go to about getting palm oil friendly products (we did this the other day….they were very helpful)
2. Pressure the governments of both our countries and others where the palm oil is made to make laws to not allow unsustainable palm oil.
3. For both of these things we might sign petitions and join with other people so that companies and governments understand how important this is. 
4. When we are shopping we will try to buy things with No palm oil in them at all.
5. If we can’t find products with NO palm oil in them, we will buy sustainable palm oil products.
6. When we can’t find what we are looking for, we will allow Erin to have a massive tantrum in the shop until companies listen!

This is a very serious issue for the planet and lots of people are trying to raise awareness. Sometimes it looks like some companies are listening and things are getting better but it is so hard to tell from looking at packets, that we are a bit confused, so we are probably going to try to cut palm oil out as much as possible until we understand what is really going on! We are trying to do our bit by writing a blog but it would also be good to talk to friends and family about these issues because not everyone knows.

We’ve learned a lot we didn’t know by researching on the internet and also just looking at the things which we had in our cupboards to find out what kind of things had Palm oil in them. We generally try to be as environmentally friendly as possible but we found lots of things we didn’t realise had palm oil in them and that’s a good lesson for us.

One of the reasons we started this blog was because we wanted to help change the world through little things and by finding out things like this, we’ve discovered lots of new ways we can make a difference and change our habits too.

We hope by sharing our stories we’re giving other people ideas too.

Thanks for visiting – Amelie and Erin xxx

http://www.greenpeace.co.uk/blog/forests/palm-oil-whos-still-trashing-forests-20160303


Greenpeace Petition - Forests not Fires


http://www.saynotopalmoil.com/


http://www.ran.org/palm_oil

http://www.worldwildlife.org/industries/palm-oil

https://ypte.org.uk/factsheets/palm-oil/introduction

http://www.kidsagainstpalmoil.org/