After an aggressive two month-long online public outreach campaign targeted at the food industry giant by Greenpeace, The Nestle Corporation has announced sweeping new initiatives to be taken in partnership with The Forest Trust. The partnership will aid Nestle in reducing the company’s contribution to deforestation and endangered species habitat loss by better ensuring sustainable practices by Nestle and its suppliers.
Environmental and conservation activists are hailing it as a major win, and technology watchers describe the public announcement of revised environmental practices to underscore the power of social media to bring about change.
The crux of the issue at hand hinges on palm oil, a key ingredient of Nestle products, but one whose sources for Nestle have been linked to deforestation of rainforest habitats of orangutans. As CNET reported in March, Nestle has long been a target of Greenpeace public outreach activities for its use of palm oil. The company, perhaps unwisely, used its Facebook page to post dismissive characterizations of its opponents that merely served to find Greenpeace and its supporters redouble their efforts and step up their pressure.
Nestle’s announcement which came early this week shied away from mention of the public relations storm that it found on its hands, opting instead to focus on the positive and future-focused aspects of their having teamed up with The Forest Trust (TFT). The international conservation organization works with groups and companies to adopt management practices and to source sustainable timber supplies that reduce contributing to the worldwide problem of deforestation. As reported by The Telegraph, TFT will assist Nestle with supply chain review and audits that will help Nestle achieve its stated goal of increasing the sustainability of its palm oil supplies from today’s 18 percent to 50 percent by the end of next year with 100 percent sustainability to be achieved by 2015.
Follow-up coverage by CNET today finds Greenpeace expressing optimism toward Nestle’s having chosen to work with TFT, an organization they have found to be a valued and trustworthy partner in conservation efforts. In addition, they are quick to praise the attention and efforts of their supporters, as well as to note the efficacy of information age tools to share information and coalesce energy and support around a cause.
CNET quotes a statement issued by Greenpeace’s UK office in reacting to Nestle’s recent announcement:
“With nearly 1.5 million views of our Kit Kat advert, over 200,000 emails sent, hundreds of phone calls and countless Facebook comments, you made it clear to Nestle that it had to address the problems with the palm oil and paper products it buys. Greenpeace campaigners have met several times with Nestle executives to discuss the problems with sourcing of palm oil and paper products. It certainly seemed like things were moving forward in these discussions. But we didn’t expect Nestle to come up with such a comprehensive ‘zero deforestation’ policy so quickly.”
Photo by Scott Ehardt via Wikimedia Commons.