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The Sinar Mas Palm Oil saga continues

August 19, 201012:20 pm

Several months ago Greenpeace started Kit Kat Nestle campaign to protest against the use of palm oil from companies that are trashing Indonesian rainforests, threatening the livelihoods of local people and pushing orang-utans towards extinction. Here is my post about the effect of the campaign: The Greenpeace Nestle Kit Kat campaign

In the end Greenpeace prevailed and now Nestle has stopped using palm oil products that come from rainforest destruction.

One of the major suppliers of Nestle was Sinar Mas. This company has now again come under immense pressure as Greenpeace reports this week:

Title: Sinar Mas caught with pants on fire, fibbing to stock markets

“Shooting yourself in the foot. Getting egg all over your face. These and many more idioms apply to the Sinar Mas group which, following the release of its audit last week, has seen its executives “misreporting” the audit’s findings.
Despite what company bigwigs have been saying, the audit doesn’t clear Sinar Mas of operating irresponsibly or outside Indonesian law, leading to the embarrassing retraction of several claims made publicly which the audit doesn’t in fact support. Worse, Sinar Mas has been telling these fibs not just to journalists, but to its shareholders, the Indonesian government and the stock exchange.”

Read the complete article here: Greenpeace on Sinar Mas Audits

My opinion

Did anyone really believe that Sinar Mas was going to back down and comply with the new rules it has set themselves as a result of outside pressure? The palm oil industry is a tough competitive industry and Sinar Mas is one of the market leaders. And it wants to stay one of the market leaders.

I believe there is only one answer to this reoccurring corporate irresponsibility. Sinar Mas needs to be closed down in my view and start anew in some shape or form that has different business principles and leadership at its core and a much stronger continuous stakeholder input. I am sure the people that where exploiting the rules and acting irresponsible are still working there. Change on this scale does not happen that quickly. So what made us think they would not go back to their old ways?

Over the years my opinion on how to tackle these difficult examples has changed. Cooperation and assistance in order to get results is one thing and must always be the first step but right-out criminal behavior does not deserve any kind of sympathy. Drastic action needs to be taken to put things at Sinar Mas and I am fully supporting the action of Greenpeace in this case.

Do you? What is your view on this?

Picture Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/artaim/2364883451/sizes/l/

Did the Greenpeace Palm Oil campaign against Nestle really work?

March 29, 20101:56 pm

9 Comments

The recent weeks has seen some interesting stakeholder pressure action by Greenpeace pressuring Nestle and its brand KitKat to discontinue buying palm oil from the palm oil supplier Sinar Mas . Sinar Mas, Greenpeace claims, is involved in illegal rain forest clearance in Indonesia.
In a recent post I was highly critical of the shock approach Greenpeace has decided to go with. This is the post: What the Greenpeace Nestle KitKat campaign is missing

Todays post is a follow up post on the results this campaign produced and my view on whether this campaign was a success or not.

This is what the campaign succeeded in doing:

Result 1: They might not want to hear it but it seems that the pressure had an effect: Nestlé sets timetable for palm oil decision
Result 2: Nestle needed to explain its stance on palm oil and the actions it has taken to address this: Q&A on palm oil the corporate Nestle page

This is an overview of the campaign coverage and results:

http://prezi.com/kmrh4fmlzsen/nestle-kerfuffle/

NESTLE KERFUFFLE on Prezi

But was the campaign really a success for the promotion of Sustainable Palm Oil production?

I believe that the campaign was not as successful as it could have been. Why? Well, how will you remember this campaign? Will you remember it as a campaign that helped the orang-utans in the Indonesian rainforest and promoting sustainable palm oil practice or will you remember it as a a social media case study on how to not do social media?

I will unfortunately remember it as a campaign on how to not do social media and this is a real shame.

For sustainable palm oil to be the only real palm oil option it is crucial that companies such as Nestle and Cargill (palm oil supplier for Nestle) are investing heavily in the availability of sustainable palm across the globe. This is the problem with sustainable palm oil. We simply do not have enough of it available.

The Greenpeace ‘shocker’ campaign has not helped in my opinion as it mostly created a hostile environment between consumers, NGO’s and companies. We need to do better if we really want to change the way these companies do their business. We need to engage and help companies do the right choices. This is our duty as modern stakeholders!

What the Greenpeace Nestle KitKat campaign is missing

March 19, 201012:37 pm

18 Comments

This week has been a very interesting week for campaigners. Many of you might have heard that Greenpeace has hit hard on Nestle and its KitKat product with allegations that Nestlé SA buys palm oil from companies destroying the Indonesian rain forests in order to plant oil palms. The video it self is very graphic but brings the point across like not many videos I have seen.

Here is the video (but if you can’t see blood do not watch this):

Have a break? from Greenpeace UK on Vimeo.

My opinion and criticism
I like the fact that Greenpeace is trying to make the world a better place and is going against the horrible palm oil practices. But there are limits how far to go. And I believe that this campaign video is going just a little bit to far and is missing a key ingredient.

I am not talking about the fact that you are seeing blood or anything similar but I am skeptical about the actual information aspect of all of this. This video in my opinion can be compared to the doom and gloom climate change ads and videos that we all hate. They are graphic but they do not really serve the purpose of being informative and promoting the most effective action by everyone to change our ways.

The same in my opinion is true for this Greenpeace campaign video. Instead of being overly graphic and shocking they should have included more context and information on which we could all act on. And not just stop buying KitKat and boycotting Nestle. We as stakeholders need to understand the overall circumstances in order to be able to make a sound judgment in my opinion. We need to know the reason why palm oil is so popular, what the situation in the producing countries is, what the Nestle point of view for not keeping control of its supply chain is, etc. This is what Greenpeace should have focused on.

So my message to Greenpeace is: Consumer activism is good but for the sake of transparency, progress and corporate accountability please also provide more information on how to solve this dilemma from a company perspective. This campaign is just like the campaigns of the past. It is time to evolve in my opinion, time to make these campaigns more effective for us as stakeholders and the involved companies.

Picture Credit: psd