Palm Oil and the destruction of our Rainforest

The other day I posted a picture on facebook of an Orangutang that had died in a fire caused by people burning virgin rainforest to make room for the production of palm oil. 

This shocked me and I decided to look into this more.

Palm oil is cheap and it's a common ingredient in lots of foods and household products, but just like with everything else that's 'cheap'- it comes at a horrible cost.

Huge areas of unspoiled rain forest are bulldozed to the ground each and every minute to make way for palm oil plantations in countries like Borneo, Sumatra, Indonesia and Malaysia.

This deforesting operation is being done on a scale and speed that is unbelievably staggering.

It's appallingly apparent that the people managing the palm oil business and the workers who are carrying out the actual clearing of the forest have zero regard for the fact that they're destroying the abundant and endangered wildlife that calls the forests home.

As a matter of fact the deforestation workers are instructed to get rid of any wildlife that happens to get in the way- and it doesn't matter how inhumanely they complete this task- including running over orangutans with their logging trucks.

Because of forests being cleared to make way for palm oil plantations, in just the last 20 years 90% of orangutan habitat has been obliterated. That's a difficult reality to let sink in.

If this kind of deforestation continues at the pace it's happening at now, orangutans could face extinction in the wild in 2016, and the jungle habitat that they call home could be entirely gone within 20 years. 

Nearly 50% of products sold in supermarkets contain palm oil. Palm oil is grown, at the moment mainly in Malaysia and Indonesia. But now the Congo is under threat. To see HOW YOUR DAILY ROUTINE CAN HELP THE RAINFOREST go to:

http://www.rainforestfoundationuk.org/media.ashx/38436-rainforest-foundation-uk-palm-oil-guide-2016-update.pdf

Animals threatened by Palm Oil development in the Congo

BUFFALO 

CHIMPANZEE 

ELEPHANT 

GORILLA

However, there is something that we can do to make sure that a disaster such as this never happens!

All we have to do is stop buying products that contain palm oil that is not a certified sustainable palm oil product as an ingredient, this will help reduce the insane demand for this incredibly unsustainable product.

Palm oil is found in many of the products that we use every day - from breadsticks to anti-dandruff shampoos - so for goodness sake, please check the label each and every time you buy.

A good site to visit for supermarkets and companies that use sustainable palm oil is http://www.ethicalconsumer.org/shoppingethically/palmoilfreelist.aspx