The Palm Oil Debate

Did you know that orangutans share 97% of our DNA? Pretty amazing, huh? Also, Orangutan means "Man Of The Jungle" in Indonesian and the have the intelligence of a 5 or 6 year old human!

Unfortunately though, these amazing creatures, along with many other species, are in grave danger of extinction, habitat loss and some are even made to be pets, all because of the palm oil trade. Now, if you haven't heard of palm oil I think you must have been living under a rock for the past few years. There have been numerous ad campaigns and petitions to try to stop this from happening but the sad truth is that 6 to 12 orangutans are killed every day while their habitat is being cleared for palm oil plantations. On top of this, mothers with baby orangutans will be separated from their child to become a prostitute while their baby is taken to be sold as a pet!

All because of palm oil....

Annually, over 50 million tons of palm oil is produced. It's not sustainable and replaces 12 million hectares of rainforest a year. That's the size of North Korea!
50% of all prepackaged products on supermarket shelves contain palm oil and the average person consumes 10kg of palm oil a year. Palm oil is pretty bad for you though as it has a high saturated fat content which promotes heart disease, increases cholesterol levels, raises blood pressure and contributes to obesity. These all combine together to make one deadly disease: cardiovascular disease. This disease takes the life of one person every two seconds.

However, here in Australia we don't have a mandatory labeling law which means palm oil can hide under the label of "Vegetable Oil" and over 25 other false names. There are other alternatives to palm oil too: canola oil, peanut oil, sunflower oil and coconut oil but no are as cheap or efficient meaning large companies are hesitant to make the switch. We can't tell which products have palm oil in them and which don't.

Check out my friends website http://www.saynotopalmoil.com/and find out more about everything you want to know about palm oil and how to avoid buying it.


Orangutans are our closest primates-why should they suffer?

Poverty and Sweatshops

Poverty is a major problem in the world. It’s not something that is necessarily always in the news and sometimes it is a bit of “Out of sight, out of mind”.

1.7 billion people in the world live in poverty. Poverty is defined as living on under $1 a day. That is over all their expenses: food, shelter, hygiene, ect.

People in situations like this are often desperate for work and will do anything. They find employment making things like clothes and sports balls in places known as “Sweatshops”. Sweatshops are often over crowded and have poor conditions. The people who work there are paid very poor wages for a lot of work. Sweatshops also use child labour to make products.

All over the world, some of the biggest companies use items made in sweat shops for their products. Some of the companies include Nike, Adidas, Disney and Tesco.

(Nike Sweatshop)

So what can we do?

There are alternative options for most things:

Do a bit of research into the clothing brands you like and see whether they use sweatshops.

Look for the Fair Trade symbol on Coffees, chocolates, teas and cafes.

Also, you can use http://www.jintasport.com.au/ for sports balls and goods or http://www.etiko.com.au/ for clothing. These sites have great prices and great goods-trust me, it's my favourite place to get netballs :)

It is such a big issue, we all need to be aware of it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVuScVCF1Ws check this out. It's the truth :(

Make Love, Not War

I've surprised even myself. Looking back at my blogs I realized that I haven't done a single one about the Norway massacre. To many, I don't think it's very controversial in terms of it's horrible and evil, and there's no doubting that. What I mean to say is that there is an underlying issue to why this has happened.

Anders Behring Breivik has fast become a household name for terrible reasons. He has been named as the "attacker" that is responsible for the bomb blast in Oslo and the massacre of young members of Norway's Labour Party. He is not an "attacker" in my eyes. No, he is much worse than that. He is a murderer, a terrorist, a killer. Nothing more and nothing less.

From what I have read, Anders was an attention seeker who was opposed to Islamic immigration. In that sentence, so many things are wrong.

1. I hate attention seekers. They are annoying, frustrating and a general nuisance.
2. The fact he is opposed to Islams is racist and horrible. I'm a proud Christian but I believe that everyone has their own individual beliefs in terms of spirituality, even if you belong to a church, and that's OK because it is a free world. No one should ever try to enforce their beliefs on anyone else and that is what, in affect, he has done.

Religion is unfortunately, seemingly a cause of many wars around the world and a constant fuel for violence and controversy around the world.

The way I see it, the people opposed to differences and religions are scared that these differences will threaten them. It's is the same with everyone and every difference. People get scared and go defensive.

We need to accept differences and be able to move on. After all, it's a free world and we are all different, we are all beautiful.