Palm Oil
In September 2011, GSUSA released a new policy on palm oil in Girl Scout cookies to take effect from the 2012-13 cookie season. Amongst the pledges made, the GSUSA announced it will purchase GreenPalm certificates to support the sustainable production of palm oil. The certificates offer a premium price to palm oil producers who are operating within the guidelines for social and environmental responsibility set by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil. Each cookie box will include a GreenPalm logo. GSUSA has also committed to working with its licensed bakers in plans to join other industry leaders in making a pledge to move to a segregated, certified sustainable palm oil source by 2015, based on market availability.
The 2011 policy was formed in response to a prolonged campaign by two Girl Scouts, Madison Vorva and Rhiannon Tomtishen. In 2007, as 11 year olds, Vorva and Tomtishen earned their Girl Scout Bronze Award by raising awareness about the endangered orangutan and their rapid diminishing rainforest habitat in Indonesia and Malaysia. When they discovered that the Girl Scout Cookies contained palm oil, an ingredient that results in rainforest destruction and human rights abuses, the two girls launched a variety of campaigns in order to convince the GSUSA to remove this ingredient from their cookies. Vorva and Tomtishen were awarded the UN Forest Heroes Award in 2011.
Read more about this topic: Girl Scout Cookie, Production
Famous quotes containing the words palm and/or oil:
“The body, what is it, Father, but a sign
To love the force that grows us, to give back
What in Thy palm is senselessness and mud?”
—Karl Shapiro (b. 1913)
“His education lay like a film of white oil on the black lake of his barbarian consciousness. For this reason, the things he said were hardly interesting at all. Only what he was.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)