Green the Film

Green is a heartbreaking, award winning film about the last days of a dying orang utan who has been rescued from the wasteland that her forest home has become. As Green lies dying on her Hello Kitty beanbag, we are shown footage of the remarkable beauty that was once found in the Indonesian rainforests and amazing moments shared between orang utan parents and offspring. We are then shown the forests being destroyed and replaced with palm oil plantations, intercut with scenes of the paper industry, the timber industry, hardwood furniture showrooms, beautiful women wearing heay make up, cars being filled up with bio-diesel made from palm oil.

Green the Film has its own website where you can watch the film, read the blog, find out who is responsible for destroying the Indonesian rainforests (scroll down) and take action. To help preserve the rainforests, ask yourself questions like:

a) do you need that new furniture? If so can you buy it second hand? Or from a dealer that sources its wood entirely ethically (admittedly difficult to verify this since the FSC is no longer entirely credible as a certification for ethically sourced wood).

b) do you need to use your car? Many forms of bio-diesel (such as those made from palm oil) are as damaging as oil and gas and there isn't enough bio-diesel from used chip fat to keep the world driving.

c) do you need to use so many cosmetics and toiletries? For those you do need, can you use less? Source the products you need from companies who do not use palm oil.

d) cut down on your use of processed foods, most of which contain palm oil. For those processed foods you can't do without, source products that contain olive oil or other alternatives to palm oil.

I posted recently about the video The Sustainability Lie, which shows that even the palm oil plantations that are certified as sustainable may be anything but.

The Indonesian tropical forests are wonderful habitats, home to amazing creatures such as the orang utan. Surely we need to do what we can to protect them?

As ever, red text in this post contains hyperlinks that lead to pages with more information.