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“Before we had a happy life,” Ms. Gaong said she tells her grandchildren. “Now it’s a difficult life. There’s nothing left for them.” The recent story in the New York Times titled “Clashes Between Tribes and Agribusiness Increase in Malaysia” tells an all-too common story. It’s not a happy story. It’s the story of farming [...]
Continue reading...Tuesday, August 30, 2011
This post is by Girl Scouts Madison Vorva (age 16) and Rhiannon Tomtishen (age 15), who have been campaigning to get palm oil out of Girl Scout Cookies for the past few years. Five years ago, while doing research for our Girl Scout Bronze Award, we learned that the cultivation of palm oil and palm [...]
Continue reading...Thursday, August 18, 2011
Cargill just reported record profits of $4.2 billion dollars for its 2010 fiscal year, a 63% increase over the previous year. As the world’s biggest agricultural trader — and the largest importer of rainforest-destroying palm oil into the US — it’s easy to see how the company achieved such huge numbers. From Girl Scout cookies [...]
Continue reading...Friday, August 5, 2011
This is the third and final installment in a series of posts that endeavors to answer a simple question: What is sustainable palm oil? The answer, of course, is anything but simple. The first blog post in this series explored the weaknesses of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), the dominant certification standard for [...]
Continue reading...Tuesday, June 7, 2011
I had the good fortune of joining rock star Girl Scout activists, Madison Vorva and Rhiannon Tomtishen, on a whirlwind media tour in New York City that brought their compelling message of rainforest conservation to millions of viewers and readers across the country and beyond — with national TV appearances on ABC, CBS and Fox [...]
Continue reading...Thursday, May 12, 2011
Calling all Girl Scouts, Girl Scout families, troop leaders and Girl Scout cookie eaters! Do you agree that Girl Scouts should not have to choose between supporting their troops by selling Girl Scout cookies and contributing to deforestation and orangutan extinction? Here’s a message from Girl Scouts Madison Vorva and Rhiannon Tomtishen… Given that a [...]
Continue reading...Tuesday, May 3, 2011
Girl Scouts USA’s mission is to empower girls to be leaders “who make the world a better place.” But today, in a shocking violation of its own mission statement, the organization made the decision to censor the comments of scores of its young leaders rather than listen to their concerns about the use of rainforest-destroying [...]
Continue reading...Monday, May 2, 2011
Will Girl Scouts USA CEO Kathy Cloninger make the right choice for future generations of Girl Scouts or not? Last week a reporter from Madi & Rhiannon’s hometown published a powerful piece in their local paper: “Child Labor, orangutans and Thin Mints: Two renegade Girl Scouts raise questions about palm oil used in popular cookies.” [...]
Continue reading...Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Today we launched a public petition asking Michelle Obama to use her influence as Honorary National President of Girl Scouts USA to make Girl Scout cookies rainforest friendly by next cookie season. For Earth Day 2010, Michelle Obama told a group of children who spent the day at the White house that the Obama household [...]
Continue reading...Monday, March 21, 2011
“Companies buying palm oil need to be aware that the only way to ensure sustainable sourcing is to buy certified sustainable palm oil from companies that have been assessed against the RSPO standards. Buying from RSPO members is not enough.” – WWF, August 2010 Girl Scouts USA (GSUSA) has actively resisted getting rainforest-destroying palm oil [...]
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Earlier today, our brothers & sisters @RAMPSWV shut down Alpha HQ today. Solidarity. http://t.co/PnMdzwdlf7
Thursday, November 10, 2011
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