Sunday, September 5, 2010

Good News For Southeast Asian Primates

In good news for orangutans and me, Burger King has stopped buying palm oil from one of the companies that's been cutting down the Indonesian rainforest to start palm oil plantations. This directly affects the lives of Singapore residents because the smoke from burning Sumatran rainforest sometimes blows into town and messes up the air quality. (My respiratory system is in pretty good shape so it's not a big deal for me, but once I was hung over and it was miserable.) A lot of other major food producers have either stopped buying palm oil from Sinar Mas, the Indonesian firm responsible for the destruction, or are being heavily pressured to do so. One hopes this will assist orangutan conservation. The islands of Borneo and Sumatra are the only two places with remaining wild orangutan populations.

I have attached a gratuitous cute animal video about a dog and an orangutan that are friends.

3 comments:

yoyo said...

I haven't found good information, but i thought most of the palm plantations were for biofuels. I have been buying my red palm oil from a nigerian place, though.

Good for burger king, i guess. but you sort of need to be willing to be eat from crappy food industry to have invluence on it.

Neil Sinhababu said...

Palm oil is the major cooking oil in these parts, so I'd be surprised if it was mostly a biofuel thing.

yoyo said...

The amount of energy used to power ICE vehicles in really big though, (~31k kilocalories for one gallon of gasoline). abou the only want the food>cars is if only a tiny fraction of the population ever drives.