Nature Alert: IKEA

Monday, 15 February 2010

IKEA

Dear friends,

Swedish furniture company IKEA sells not just furniture but also candles and tealights. There is, however, a reason for the low price: In order to keep candles and tealights cheap, the company increasingly relies on palm oil. Every year, IKEA uses 32,000 tonnes of palm oil for candle production alone!

IKEA knows that palm oil production is unsustainable. The company has confirmed in a reply to Rainforest Rescue that they cannot guarantee the sustainable production of the palm oil which they use. Nonetheless, the company continues to rely on palm oil.

Please support our protest and call on IKEA to stop the use of palm oil for candles and tealights in future and instead to use only domestic materials:

Viast this web site and follow the link to this article on the right of the page.

http://www.rainforest-rescue.org/index.php

Many thanks.

Best regards,

Guadalupe Rodríguez

Rainforest Rescue

Tel.: 030-51 73 68 79

E-mail: guadalupe@regenwald.org

http://www.rainforest-rescue.org

Hall of Shame for President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and the Palm Oil Industry.

Nothing can prepare one for the sight of the systematic extermination of orangutans by the government of Indonesia.

Look at the photos and news articles on these pages in the context of a statement the President made to the media on 10th December 2007.

“In the last 35 years about 50,000 orangutans are estimated to have been lost as their habitats shrank. If this continues, this majestic creature will likely face extinction by 2050,” President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said at the launch of an orangutan conservation plan at the climate talks in Bali.

“The fate of the orangutan is a subject that goes to the heart of sustainable forests … To save the orangutan we have to save the forest.”

Statements like these are most welcome, but unless backed up by action, such words fall on deaf ears within the Ministry of Forestry....who are busy granting licences to cut down the very forests the President says they should protect!

When you think you are to busy to help, please could you reflect for a moment on .........

The following extract refers to environmental problems in general. I just hope you find it as thought provoking and relevant to orangutans as I have.

"This is such a shocking and unpalatable fact that most people deny it, or they just don't want to think about it. They believe as individuals, they can do little about it, so push it to the back of their minds. But I can't do that.

When something has to be done, we need to do it. It doesn't matter how big the challenge is or how hard the solution; if I know something is wrong, and I am in a position to help, I will do my best to make it right." Duncan Bannatyne, successful British businessman.