Guess what? Nestlé has just agreed to our campaign demands, by developing a plan which will identify and remove any companies in their supply chain with links to deforestation so their products will have "no deforestation footprint". These companies include the infamous Sinar Mas, and this move will also have implications for the likes of Cargill. This plan still needs to be followed up with action, and The Forest Trust (TFT) - an independent organisation we've worked with before - will be closely monitoring Nestlé's progress.
So, huge thanks to those who helped with the campaign, including anyone who had their photo taken looking through our orang utan poster - we really couldn't have done it without you; in total, there were nearly 1.5 million views of our KitKat advert and over 200,000 emails were sent, not to mention direct action by the international orang utans...
However, the forest campaign continues as we're moving straight on to the next big player in the palm oil industry - banking giant HSBC. They may not be the first company that you'd associate with palm oil, but it funds deforestation by investing in Sinar Mas. HSBC's own policy says that it will "not provide financial services which directly support operations in wetlands on the Ramsar [Convention on Wetlands of International Importance] list", but we've recently published evidence to show that Sinar Mas has expanded its operations around the Danau Sentarum National Park in Kalimantan, one of the very wetlands on the Ramsar list.
HSBC bosses need to know the devastating effect their investments are having, and that they can't bank on deforestation or driving orang-utans to extinction. So, please email the CEO of HSBC (Michael Geohegan) to make sure the bank listens just like Nestle did...
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