As the train pulled into Croydon station and I saw the sign ‘Welcome to Croydon, home of Nestle’ a little shiver went through me, could we be going to confront the company I most love to hate?
I had distant memories of other actions on palm oil but our previous target, Unilever, had agreed to Greenpeace’s demands before I’d done any street campaigning. After so much work on climate change and Heathrow, could I remember anything useful about palm oil?
Whilst other large suppliers such as Unilever and Kraft have made efforts to drop unsustainable suppliers of palm oil, Nestle is still happily buying unsustainable palm oil planted on the ruins of what was Indonesia’s rainforest. Not only does this cause the release of massive quantities of greenhouse gases (released from the felled trees as well as from the peatlands underneath) making Indonesia the third largest greenhouse gas emitter in the world, but it’s also destroying the orang-utans’ rainforest home, pushing them ever closer to extinction.
And it was the orang–utans who were going to be out in force in Croydon town centre to tell Nestle employees that they’d had enough!
We got up early the next morning and got changed into our orang-utan suits. Then we made our rather surreal way lolloping down to Nestle HQ. Unfortunately security rushed out and confiscated our ladders before any orang-utans could make it up onto the big entrance porch.
The rest of us set about ‘monkeying around’ accompanying the ‘humans’ who were giving out fliers to tell staff about the campaign. Our training on how to act as orang-utans paid off and I have to say we were pretty convincing!
Whilst all eyes were on us, climbers had dropped down above the entrance porch and were soon unfurling a KitKat branded banner with an orang-utan pleading to Nestle to ‘give me a break’. Elsewhere more orang-utans and their human helpers were lining the route from East Croydon train station to the Nestlé office with posters and billboard adverts. Anyone turning up for work that day could be in no doubt that their company was being targeted or why.
We carried on rolling around on Croydon’s pavements, picking pretend flees out of each others’ fur and cuddling up or play fighting with people we’d only just met throughout the morning. It was certainly a different way to get to know each other (not that you could tell who was who inside the costumes). Even though it was boiling hot inside the orang-utan costumes, it was so inspiring hearing the support from passers-by, so many of whom seemed to know all about unsustainable palm oil, that it was a privilege to represent the endangered orang-utans alongside our human friends who were doing the talking.
Around 1ish we decided it was time to go – we’d talked to many Nestle employees. After first being told that we might all be arrested, we negotiated with the police and they agreed that we could all go freely, even the climbers hanging off the building and those that had plastered enormous great advertising hoardings outside the station.
Even better, Nestle released a statement saying they were dropping contracts with one of the worst palm oil suppliers, Sinar Mas. Whilst this is not enough, and we will continue campaigning until they also ensure their other suppliers cut contracts with Sinar Mas, it certainly wasn’t bad for one day’s work.
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