Nature v. cookie money – lessons for Girl Scouts

A couple of Girl Scouts were looking for material about the cookies sold each year as this organization’s main fundraiser and discovered much more than they wanted to. Their findings have put Madison Vorva and Rhiannon Tomtishen at the center of a national debate on what an acceptable tradeoff can be to monetize natural resources in order to make money from items that are not truly valuable in and of themselves, when the cost is environmental destruction and sometimes, lives. The young scouts found out that Girl Scout cookies are made with palm oil derived from trees grown in groves that Orangutan habitat is destroyed to make open space for. In simple terms, Orangutans die in large numbers due to loss of habitat in order for Girl Scouts to have cookies to sell.

For Madison Vorva and Rhiannon Tomtishen, it all began with orangutans. Four years ago-inspired by the work of primate researcher Jane Goodall-the two friends from Ann Arbor, Mich., collaborated on a research report on the endangered primates to help qualify for their Girl Scout Bronze award, one of the highest prizes offered by the 3.2 million-member organization. Vorva and Tomtishen have both been scouts since they were five years old, and they take their roles and responsibilities seriously. So when they discovered that one of the major threats to orangutan populations in Indonesia was deforestation caused by the growth of palm plantations-and that the iconic cookies the Girl Scouts sell can sometimes contain palm oil from plantations on deforested land-the girls refused to simply do nothing. “Being a Girl Scout is about showing stewardship for the land,” says Vorva, who is now 16. (Tomtishen is 15.) “We knew we had to keep fighting.”

Making Girl Scout Cookies Better for the Planet | Rainforest Action Network http://www.ran.org/making-girl-scout-cookies-better-planet#ixzz1ov7nzi8d

Unfortunately, the Girl Scout organization has not demanded major immediate changes to their cookie formula and seems content to go along with the plan offered by agribusiness giants like Cargill, which is talking about plans to offer sustainably produced palm oil several years from now – probably hoping that by then, there won’t be any Orangutans left to protect. Girl Scouts has taken this position:

In its announcement Wednesday, the Girl Scouts said it has directed its bakers to use as little palm oil as possible, and only in recipes where there is no alternative. It wants its bakers to move to a segregated, certified sustainable palm oil source by 2015.

The Scouts will buy GreenPalm certificates to support the sustainable production of palm oil. The certificates offer a premium price to palm oil producers who are operating within best-practices guidelines set by the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil, an organization of palm oil producers, consumer goods manufacturers, retailers, environmentalists and others.
Girl Scouts of the USA will also become an affiliate member of the roundtable.

The teen activists and environmentalists welcomed the announcement as a good first step, but said much more needs to be done.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44718393/ns/world_news-world_environment/#.T11L7piId5b

Also see Girl Scouts Activists, Rainforest Action Network and Union of Concerned Scientists Respond to Palm Oil Cookie Announcement by Girl Scouts USA

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