Kit Kat Killers
Posted by keith on March 18th, 2010
Have a break? from Greenpeace UK on Vimeo.
From Greenpeace UK – a very good spoof video indeed, for a very important message…
We all like a break, but the orang-utans of Indonesia don’t seem to be able to get one. We have new evidence which shows that Nestlé – the makers of Kit Kat – are using palm oil produced in areas where the orang-utans’ rainforests once grew. Even worse, the company doesn’t seem to care.
So the Greenpeace orang-utans have been despatched to Nestlé head offices in Croydon to let employees know the environmental crimes their company is implicated in, and begin an international campaign to have Nestlé give us all a break.
As we’ve noted many times before, Indonesian forests are being torn down to grow palm oil which is the vegetable fat of choice for companies worldwide, including Nestlé. But while many companies such as Unilever and Kraft are making efforts to disassociate themselves from the worst practices of the palm oil industry, Nestlé has done diddly squat.
By lining the route from East Croydon train station to their office with posters, leaflets and billboard adverts – not to mention orang-utans hanging off the side of the building – we hope to start raising questions within the building about the kind of companies Nestlé is doing business with. And we’re asking them to have a break at 11am this morning to find out what else we have planned. Join us back here at 11am for a quick break too.
The palm oil Nestlé uses in products like Kit Kat is sourced from what used to be rainforest in Indonesia, forest which is being destroyed faster than anywhere else on the planet. One of Nestlé’s suppliers, the giant Sinar Mas group, is responsible for a large part of this arboreal carnage and has a track record of appalling environmental and social practices, not only on its palm oil plantations but also, through its subsidiary APP, its pulp and paper ones. Just take a look at these photos for a small glimpse of what Sinar Mas companies are up to.
The evidence collected in our report, Caught Red Handed, shows how Sinar Mas is not only clearing forests but destroying carbon-rich peatlands. Burning and draining these peatlands releases vast amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, helping to make Indonesia the third largest greenhouse gas emitter in the world.
Meanwhile, the palm oil industry often comes into conflict with local communities over land rights and resources, and the already endangered orang-utans are being pushed closer to extinction. With the forests destroyed, they’re left without their natural sources of food and so are forced to venture into the plantations to eat young palms, where they can be seen as pests.
If you’ve been following Greenpeace for a while, you’ll know we’ve been working to halt the devastation in Indonesia for some time, and two years ago our orang-utans were out in force outside Unilever’s offices. As a result of our work, Unilever has recently dropped Sinar Mas as a supplier and other companies like Kraft have done the same.
Yet despite Nestle’s claims that it expects its own suppliers to uphold high green standards (as detailed in their Supplier’s Code), the Kit Kat makers still continue to do business with Sinar Mas. With other companies not willing to be tarnished by the devastation Sinar Mas is creating, this leaves Nestlé – like the orang-utans – out on a limb.
The recent Fairtrade certification for some of its Kit Kat range shows Nestlé is keen to point to its ethical credentials, but the benefit brought by the Fairtrade ingredients is undermined by the palm oil loaded with wilful deforestation.
It’s time Nestlé took a break from turning a blind eye to what its suppliers are up to.
UPDATE: There’s been so much going here over the last 18 hours that I’ve only now found the time to write an update. Since the last post here, the Kit Kat video which was pulled from Youtube (following a complaint from Nestlé about copyright infringement) was resurrected on Vimeo and has been racking up views like there’s no tomorrow – 78,500 as of this moment. Not the shrewdest move Nestlé could have made, and I liked how Canada’s Globe & Mail referred to it as “a global game of whack-a-mole”.
More Palm Oil hypocrisy here. Remember, so many products contain palm oil that the only way of really avoiding it is by getting a guarantee from the manufacturer that there is no palm oil in that product; if the product says “vegetable oil” then it might contain palm oil!
For UK shoppers, here is a useful guide from the BBC