Delivering our “message in a bottle”: A quarter million people call for PepsiCo to cut Conflict Palm Oil

By Malachi Robinson

The phrase “the elephant in the room” is, by definition, “an English metaphorical idiom for an obvious truth that is going unaddressed; an obvious problem or risk no one wants to discuss.”

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Three years into our Snack Food 20 campaign, it’s a pretty well known fact that PepsiCo is using Conflict Palm Oil throughout its global supply chain. It’s also a known fact that Conflict Palm Oil is a driver of modern day slavery, unfair wages, child labor, species extinction, deforestation, climate change, unsafe work environments, and a host of other ills, including the deadly annual haze crisis in Indonesia.

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This is the “obvious truth” that remains unaddressed by PepsiCo. And you, the hundreds of thousands of people who have signed our petitions and supported the campaign, already know this. You’ve stood with the 3.5 million palm oil workers and have tried to get PepsiCo to adequately discuss it.

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PepsiCo’s continued unwillingness to fully address its Conflict Palm Oil problem is unacceptable.

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So we enlisted the help of our activist-artists friends from DC and NYC to help us make the elephant in the room painfully obvious to PepsiCo, and we delivered it to PepsiCo’s doorstep.

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Today, an international coalition including Rainforest Action Network (RAN), SumOfUs, Wildlife Asia, and Oceanic Preservation Society (OPS)––the award-winning film team behind Racing Extinction and The Cove––together with local volunteers and supporters, delivered a quarter million signatures to PepsiCo’s Purchase, NY headquarters in a 10 foot Pepsi bottle.

Pepsi accepting the #ConflictPalmOil bottle
PepsiCo accepted the elephant in the room, and the company knows we’re willing to discuss it with them. Now the question remains, will PepsiCo finally do something about it?

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