To recap, palm oil is in many common supermarket products such as snacks, candy, and even soaps and detergents. Rainforest Action Network has created a site to educate consumers on the how destructive palm oil is to our global environment. Palm oil destroys vital ecosystems, contributes to global climate change, results in the displacement of Indigenous people and small family farmers, and is produced through exploitative labor practices.

Please help educate grocery shoppers about these facts and take action in anyway possible. RAN tells us: “Palm  oil  plantations  are  expanding  into  the  planet’s  most biodiverse  ecosystems,  including  rainforests,  grasslands  and  peat swamps in South America, Southeast Asia, the Pacific and Africa. These regions are home to millions of plant and animal species, including highly endangered orangutans, clouded leopards, and sun bears.”

Big palm oil companies pay to have important oxygen providing rainforests clear cut for their palm crops and painfully push out the native people that rely on the land. This endangers the plants, animals and waterways that entire communities have thrived on forever.

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A representative of the Survival campaign stopped by the home of Anil Agarwal, billionaire CEO of the UK mining corporation Vedanta Resources, to deliver a complaint to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) that has been filed against his company.

The company plans to mine a sacred mountain in Orissa, India, which could destroy the 800-person Dongria Kondh, one of India’s most isolated tribes. The OECD lays out standards of good corporate behavior on British companies and anyone can file a complaint.

“The only Christmas present the Dongria Kondh want is for Vedanta to abandon its plans,” said Survival’s director Stephen Corry. “They are in no doubt that the mine will destroy them.”

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