The Szabo Stream

It seems like every year, Greenpeace picks a major packaged goods company (this year it happens to be Nestle) to get their message across when it comes to supporting an immediate moratorium on deforestation for palm oil in South East Asia.

On May 9th of 2009 (nearly 1 year ago), Greenpeace started a similar campaign with Dove. Remember the "Onslaught" video? 

Two things I feel that went down well this time around:

1. I have to applaud Greenpeace for continuing to raise awareness around the Palm Oil issue and what it means to the rain forest and its occupants. They use the major corporations like Nestle and Unilever because they are the biggest buyers. And they buy because of our incessant appetite for candy bars and body washes.

2. I also have to applaud Neslte for their stance. They're doing the right things by canceling contracts with illegal suppliers and by taking the necessary steps to ensure it doesn't happen again. What else are they supposed to do? As for the "people" responding to Facebook fans, fire them.

They're totally imcompetent when it comes to navigating social media in 2010. Unacceptable. In fact, their ill-mannered responses is what caused this whole rackus in the first place.

And last, I'm totally indifferent to whether it's Neslte or Unilever that's killing the rain forest. There are so many other corporations dong the same thing - Greenpeace goes after the international brands to get the message across.

But at the end of the day, we only have ourselves to blame because we continue to buy things without thinking about the impact we make.