Letters For Earth

Nestle has been under fire from greenpeace, and rightly so. Nestle products sometimes source palm oil. Palm oil has the potential to be a renewable resource if properly managed. The way not to do this is by cutting down the rainforest. Cutting down the rainforest is pretty bad in terms of destruction. 1st, rainforest have SO much carbon in them, when they are cut down the carbon dioxide is released back into the air (decomp or fuel) 2nd, rainforests fix so much carbon dioxide, they have a net fixation of CO2, so it slows climate change due to anthropogenic carbon dioxide. 3rd lots of cool stuff live there - cool stuff that deserves to live and could provide us with medicines. On the 16th of April, at the Nestle AGM, they were asked about palm oil and they had some good, but distant targets. Yay for change boo for time frame.

This went, hopefully, to the chairman of the Board of Directors, Peter Brabeck-Letmathe.
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Dear Mr. Brabeck-Letmathe,

First, I would like to applaud you for recognizing the value of the rainforest and acknowledging that Nestle needs to take steps to reduce its consumption of palm oil. I do realize that Nestle is not a major consumer of palm oil, both within the company and relative to global standards.

Second, I believe that the role of Nestle could be much greater. Nestle is a large and near ubiquitous company and the effects of your company will have a ripple effect and other companies will join suit. They must join suit, because concern for the environmental effects of deforestation is only growing. It's also a pretty good catch-all. Rainforests contain most of the world's biodiversity, many large charismatic animals live there, and they are huge carbon stores. Protecting areas of rainforest has a huge effect on many different environmental concerns.

I know that economically feasibility is often in contrast with conservation. Allow people to vote with their dollar, change one Nestle product to 100% sustainable palm oil (please don't do this by reducing the amount of sustainable palm oil in other products). Brand it as such, and allow people to support your initiatives while benefiting your company. I'm a big believer in purchasing items based on company policy but how am I to show that these are the items that I want to buy if they are not available?

Are there any upcoming products that I can purchase and feel good about purchasing, knowing that it contains 100% sustainable palm oil?

Thank you,

Today we get a guest blog, Jordy really was diplomatic and didn't make mention of my neuroses like the stack of paper to be recycled or the refusal to turn up the heat!
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Living with an Environmentalist

Hello, I’m Jordy, Lauren’s boyfriend. We’ve been dating for almost 4 years now and she asked me write about coexisting with an environmentalist like herself.

Before I met Lauren, I wasn’t exactly a menace to the planet but I wasn’t the best for it either. I’d happily forgo vegetables for more meat, toss a pop can into the garbage, etc. Lauren’s awareness and consideration for this Earth has helped me changed my attitude and be conscious of what I do and how it might negatively affect the environment.

The changes weren’t radical. You can’t just expect someone to change immediately. But after awhile your habits will sort of rub off on one another. I now notice when stuff is local, and may choose one brand over another based on how close to home it was produced (price is still the major motivator for me though). I feel good when I take the new hybrid metro buses whereas before I might have cared less. I find myself being more disgusted with trash lying around in gutters and being more enthused with doing stuff like vermicomposting (worm composting and harvesting their crap for fertilizer. You can read more about this fun process in Lauren’s previous blogs).

It’s been a change for the better. If everyone in the world was able to make the relatively small attitudinal changes that I did the impact would probably be pretty impressive (a billion or so less cans thrown in the garbage, for one). So thank you Lauren, for helping me and helping the planet as well!