Why this step is so important:
Unilever invests heavily in brands like Dove soap, Flora (Becel) margarine, OMO and Persil laundry detergent, Pot Noodle and Unox soups so people will trust them. Branding makes products personal. That's why for this step in the campaign we need you to do it alone -- to write in your own words, person-to-person.
Show the top managers at Unilever that you care, that you can see what the palm oil business is doing to Indonesia's forests, and that they have to change immediately.
How this works:
Please use your own email program (like Outlook or Hotmail or Gmail) to write a new mail. You can use our list of points below to help write the message.
Send your email to these addresses:
patrick.cescau@unilever.com, kees.vandergraaf@unilever.com, ralph.kugler@unilever.com, lettemieke.mulder@unilever.com, jan-kees.vis@unilever.com, doveaction@greenpeace.org
Feel free to write about your own experiences and thoughts too. Please remember that you are writing to people who also have hopes and feelings for the Earth.
Points you could make:
- Indonesia is losing its forest faster then anywhere else on Earth, driving species like orang-utans to extinction.
- Due to the destruction of rainforests and peatlands, Indonesia is currently the 3rd biggest greenhouse gas polluter in the world (behind only USA and China). And palm oil plantations are causing much of the deforestation.
- Unilever is one of the world's biggest users of Indonesian palm oil for many of its products. About half of Unilever's palm oil supply comes from Indonesia. As recently as 2005, Unilever purchased 1 in every 20 tonnes of palm oil produced in the country.
- Indonesian palm oil is used in products like Dove, Knorr, Walls, Ola, Persil, Omo, Surf, Flora and Becel.
- Demand for palm oil is forecast to grow quickly. According to the UN 98 percent of Indonesia's lowland forest will be destroyed by 2022 if trends continue.
- Unilever has failed to take any effective action to ensure its palm oil is sourced from sustainable sources. It also heads the Round Table on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) which has overseen the situation continue to get worse.
- Unilever, as a major buyer of palm oil, and leader of the RSPO, is in a unique position to help save Indonesia's rainforests.
- At the moment the RSPO is little more than a greenwashing operation because RSPO members continue to be involved in the destruction of Indonesia's rainforests
- Greenpeace investigations show that it is Unilever's own palm oil traders and producers (themselves RSPO members) who are leading 'aggressive expansion' of the sector that results in the devastation of the last remaining orang-utan rainforest and peatland habitat in Borneo.
If you need more background information here's a very useful Q&A on palm oil.
