'Follow the Money': How Rainforest Action Network Is Beating the Corporate Giants

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http://www.alternet.org/environment/follow-money-how-rainforest-action-network-beating-corporate-giants



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Allen and RAN’s communications director Nell Greenberg recently sat down with AlterNet to talk about RAN’s current campaigns and their vision for taking on the country’s biggest polluters.

Tara Lohan: What campaign are you most excited about now?

Lindsey Allen: Right now the campaign that we are most excited about is the launch of our palm oil campaign. What folks probably don't realize is that palm oil is in roughly half of processed foods that you find at a grocery story. We're going to be targeting snack companies and taking the top 20 of them to task for using palm oil because it's clearing orangutan habitat. It's causing human rights violations. There's forced labor on palm oil plantations.

We're looking at this as the last stand of the Sumatran orangutan. We won't be able to say that we didn't see extinction as a very real threat and that we didn't see this coming, because it's very clear. There are very few animals left, especially in northern Sumatra.

TL: How are you going to get people excited about a campaign that's happening very far away?

LA: Well, it's not as far away as you might think. If you walked around your house you can find palm oil in every room of your house, so there's a very direct connection between the decisions that people are making with their pocketbooks and what is happening in a place that might seem very far away. There are people that are at the other end of the supply chain so our decisions are all directly affecting those communities.

[fasttense]

1. I thought Palm oil was bad for you anyway. n/t

[roody]

2. It is. Bad in many ways.