Retail Responsibly for Orangutans

Experts at Brookfield Zoo, Chicago, have called on us all to recognise the plight of the rare and diminishing species, the Orangutan. In a conference held on Thursday, Cheryl Knott, a leading Orangutan expert on a project at Harvard University, explained how something as simple as buying the right brands can truly make a big difference.

The main threat to the Orangutan species is the loss of habitat in their only native countries of Burma and Sumatra, Indonesia. A report earlier this year from the United Nations’ Environment Programme [UNEP] said Indonesia’s forest habitat for orangutans may be gone by 2022 without intervention. Boycotting retail products that source Palm Oil from an unsustainable source, can cut down on the massive rainforest loss.

RETAIL RESPONSIBLY

• Read the labels of your grocery and toiletry shopping, choose brands that either do not use Palm Oil at all, or use a sustainable source.
• Do not buy any wood materials from an uncertified tropical hardwood – it will have come from an illegal logging site. Anything from toothpicks to furniture…..
• Next time you pass a charity box at a zoo or otherwise aimed at underfunded conservation efforts – drop £1 in. If we all made a small contribution the difference would be huge.

Not only are the trees destroyed, but the mothers killed and the babies taken away to be sold as illegal pets, forcing them into a new life of captivity and misery. Please do a little something to help – a little change for you could make a massive change for them.