Nature Alert: Good customer relations

Saturday 21 November 2009

Good customer relations

PERSONAL NOTE: A reply to a supporter who enquired about this company's use of palm oil. Look at how much care the company has taken with its reply, and compare this to replies from non-caring companies such as Mars.

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Dear

Many thanks for your e-mail regarding the work you are doing to raise awareness about the destruction of the rainforest and your questions about our own rainforest activities. It’s good to hear of your commitment to raising awareness of these important issues.

For the first stage of our Yorkshire Rainforest Project (our family business’s pledge to save an area of rainforest the size of Yorkshire), we are working with the Rainforest Foundation UK in Peru’s Amazon rainforest to save an area of rainforest larger than the Yorkshire Dales.

The project is working with the Ashaninka community who live in the Selva Central region of Peru and call the rainforest home. With our support, the Rainforest Foundation UK will help the community to gain the skills and confidence to protect their rights and to help families make a living by developing small-scale sustainable livelihoods so that they can manage and look after the rainforest for future generations. Orang-utans are not native to this project area, although they may play a part in future stages of our rainforest saving activities.

You also asked about whether we use Palm Oil in any of our Bettys specialities. With all our specialities we look for the highest quality ingredients from sustainable sources so, although we do need to use a small amount of palm oil, it is certified organic from South America. The suppliers who source our palm oil are committed to sustainable development and are members of the RSPO, the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil, who are working in cooperation with the World Wildlife Fund to make sure that palm oil is farmed responsibly and with regard to conservation of natural resources and preservation of biodiversity.

I do hope this information is helpful to you and if you have any further questions please do let me know.

Thanks again for getting in touch, and all best wishes

Sam Gibson

Samantha Gibson

Bettys & Taylors of Harrogate

Tel: 01423 814000

Hall of Shame for President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and the Palm Oil Industry.

Nothing can prepare one for the sight of the systematic extermination of orangutans by the government of Indonesia.

Look at the photos and news articles on these pages in the context of a statement the President made to the media on 10th December 2007.

“In the last 35 years about 50,000 orangutans are estimated to have been lost as their habitats shrank. If this continues, this majestic creature will likely face extinction by 2050,” President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said at the launch of an orangutan conservation plan at the climate talks in Bali.

“The fate of the orangutan is a subject that goes to the heart of sustainable forests … To save the orangutan we have to save the forest.”

Statements like these are most welcome, but unless backed up by action, such words fall on deaf ears within the Ministry of Forestry....who are busy granting licences to cut down the very forests the President says they should protect!

When you think you are to busy to help, please could you reflect for a moment on .........

The following extract refers to environmental problems in general. I just hope you find it as thought provoking and relevant to orangutans as I have.

"This is such a shocking and unpalatable fact that most people deny it, or they just don't want to think about it. They believe as individuals, they can do little about it, so push it to the back of their minds. But I can't do that.

When something has to be done, we need to do it. It doesn't matter how big the challenge is or how hard the solution; if I know something is wrong, and I am in a position to help, I will do my best to make it right." Duncan Bannatyne, successful British businessman.