Time’s Running Out: The Deforestation Problem that Consumer Companies Created

Over the last 10 years, consumer companies like Unilever, Colgate Palmolive, and General Mills promised their customers that they would clean up the palm oil in their products by 2020 — for the forest and the climate. However, with less than two years to go, forest destruction in Indonesia shows no sign of slowing down.

Greenpeace’s new report, Moment of Truth, reveals that brands are not on track to keep their promise of a clean palm oil supply chain by 2020. The problem keeps getting bigger and the responsibility relies on the companies profiting from this destruction.

In response, Greenpeace challenged 16 of the world’s leading brands to reveal where their palm oil comes from. Since today, nine leading global brands have taken the unprecedented step to release this information. The results are shocking but not surprising: none of them can guarantee that the palm oil they buy doesn’t come from forest destruction.

What are the consequences of business as usual? Let’s take a look:

Indonesia has more threatened and endangered species than any other country on Earth — largely due to the destruction of their habitats.

The Bornean orangutan population has decreased by half since 1999, with over 100,000 lost in the last 16 years. In 2017, a new species of orangutan was discovered in Sumatra, and it’s already endangered.

Around 24 million hectares of Indonesia’s rainforest was destroyed between 1990 and 2015. And since 2012, 146 football fields of rainforests have been lost every hour — that’s one football field every 25 seconds.