Our daily habits and support of certain companies are quietly but largely contributing to the decline of the orangutan. In order to meet our demand for the ingredient, many plantations are expanding and replacing the forests of Malaysia & Indonesia as the land provides prime conditions to grow oil palm.

I encourage you to simply take a peek into your kitchen and bathroom and familiarize yourself with the ingredients of
the products you use regularly. Palm oil (also listed as Palmitate and a variety of other ‘palm’ labels), frequently appears in cereals, cookies, sweets, ice cream, milk as a Vitamin A additive, and even in soaps and cosmetics.

Some companies do in fact use sustainably grown palm oil and are not supplied by plantations contributing to deforestation. Because of the large public outcry on palm oil, many companies are listing who are their suppliers or if they are members of the Roundtable of Sustainable Palm Oil http://www.rspo.org/
To be a member, you must prove your ingredients come from sustainable sources. That website offers a directory of such companies.

The Cheyenne Mountain Zoo’s palm oil app also offers a quick way to find products that are orangutan-friendly. http://www.cmzoo.org/conservation/palmOilCrisis/

Another means I strongly support is to write to these companies. Ask them where they are getting their palm oil and pass along your new found knowledge about palm oil’s impact on wildlife.

You can learn more about WCS’s work in Indonesia and Malaysia here: http://www.wcs.org/where-we-work/asia/indonesia.aspx http://www.wcs.org/saving-wildlife/great-apes/orangutan.aspx