Colgate agrees to stop buying dirty palm oil - but P&G is still dodging the issue

Posted by Richardg — 24 March 2014 at 6:53pm - Comments
All rights reserved. Credit: Greenpeace
Orangutan in Tanjung Puting National Park

Great news: Colgate just agreed to stop buying palm oil from forest destroyers. Not only is this a win for fans of dental hygiene (and let's face it, no one wants orangutan breath) but it leaves Procter & Gamble more isolated than ever.

Colgate joins a growing list of companies, including Mars, L'Oreal, Nestle, Unilever and Ferrero, that are making sure that the palm oil they buy isn't putting tigers and orangutans at risk of extinction.

Procter & Gamble, meanwhile, is showing no signs of movement.

The company - which is normally pretty chatty on social media, has barely said a word since hundreds of thousands of us told it to clean up its palm oil. Its Facebook pages are gathering dust, its Twitter feeds forgotten. Anything to avoid our awkward questions about its palm oil.

For a company that claims to spend a third of its advertising budget online, this is a disaster.

If P&G won't speak to us, then we're going to have to go to P&G. Already, more than 350,000 of us have shown Procter & Gamble how their business is destroying the rainforest. That's a great start - but now let's show them how ignoring the issue is destroying their business.

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