Following the launch of an online petition urging Procter and Gamble (P&G) to commit to no deforestation across their palm oil supply chain last week, Greenpeace has now put further pressure on the global giant by launching a scathing video that spoofs P&G’s ‘Thank You Mom” advertisement campaign.
In stark contrast to the P&G campaign, which celebrates the nurturing and loving aspects of motherhood, the Greenpeace campaign features orphaned orangutans, whose parents have been killed or severely injured due to the destruction of their habitats by palm oil companies.
The video, launched on Thursday, puts the spotlight on P&G for their unsustainable palm oil sourcing policy, and demands that the company commits to a no deforestation policy across their palm oil supply chain.
Its launch follows a pledge by palm oil producer Golden-Agri Resources in the same week to expand the scope of its forest conservation policy to its entire supply chain, and a decision by Indonesia to ratify the Asean Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution.
“While Procter & Gamble advertise about motherhood, companies that produce palm oil for P&G have been making orphans out of orangutans. Together, we can get P&G to commit to only using forest-friendly palm oil,” said Areeba Hamid, Greenpeace International forest campaigner.
The group also announced that it had carried out a protest at the P&G Headquarters in Cincinnati, Ohio. Activists dressed in a tiger costume while hanging from a zipline, and unfurled banners from the buildings with slogans highlighting the habitat loss faced by Sumatran Tigers because of palm oil agriculture.
Greenpeace estimates that there are as few as 400 Sumatran Tigers left in the wild; the Orangutan Conservancy also estimates that there are only about 40,000 orangutans remaining in Borneo and Sumatra, and that they could be extinct in the wild in less than 25 years.
Greenpeace’s campaign against P&G follows successful efforts to convert companies such as Nestlé, L’Oreal, and Unilever to adopting zero deforestation policies across their palm oil supply chain. Their petition calling for P&G to make their products forest-friendly has garnered more than 201,000 signatures to date.
