Outrage as palm oil companies exterminate hundreds of orang-utans

[kenny blankenship]

11. Avoid "environmentally friendly" cleaning products

Most of these are based on palm oil, I have discovered.
I fell for the green "eco" marketing some years back, not knowing that what I was really backing with my money was this:

ECOCIDE
it used to be jungle, orangutan habitat, but was slashed and burned to raise palm trees for oil.
Here is the top of the ingredient list for Seventh Generation Dish Detergent:

Aqua (water), sodium lauryl sulfate and caprylyl/myristyl glucoside (plant-derived cleaning agents)

I mention that brand only because they are typical and widely distributed.

Here is what Wikipedia has to say about that main ingredient sodium lauryl sulfate:

Being derived from inexpensive coconut and palm oils, it is a common component of many domestic cleaning products.

here is the packaging of the typical "environmentally friendly" cleaning product:


White bottle to indicate purity and innocence! Green leaf background, blue sky with cloud. You mean I can PURCHASE my way to a clean conscience and at the same time choose balance with nature as a lifestyle option??? OH THANK YOU! Thank You Global Capitalism! The bottle should have a field of blackened stumps with an incinerated orangutan carcass on its label instead.

Nestlé foods is also a major purchaser of plantation raised palm oil. Another class of product to avoid and examine skeptically.

Obviously, individual consumers cannot stop the final destruction of Indonesian rain forest and orang habitat. Only pressure from many countries' governments on the government of Indonesia can stop that. But we can pressure our government to take action. We will have to grab their attention when they have a free moment in between waging their wars for pipeline routes and signing more unrestricted global trade treaties.