By Ashley Schaeffer Yildiz

A few miles north of New York City, what do Westchester and Fairfield Counties have to do with child labor? Species extinction? Rainforest destruction? Climate change? Everything.

PepsiCo’s Conflict Palm Oil Problem

Global snack food giant PepsiCo has its headquarters in Purchase, NY, located in the heart of Westchester County, and uses hundreds of thousands of tons of palm oil each year. For the past three years, concerned consumers around the world have urged PepsiCo to take action and address its Conflict Palm Oil problem. Unfortunately, PepsiCo continues to turn a blind eye to the social conflict and environmental destruction in its supply chain.

Campaign to End Conflict Palm Oil Heats Up in Pepsi’s Hometown

That’s why this month we’re taking our demands directly to PepsiCo’s doorstep. With so many of the company’s top executives living and working in a concentrated geographic area of Westchester County, and neighboring Fairfield County, we are launching a full-fledged campaign there to make our message Crystal Clear: now is the crucial time for PepsiCo to take a stand for the climate, the rainforest, and the families who live and work there.

Check out the beautiful billboard that just went up along Hwy 1 in Greenwich, CT––located in Fairfield County and the hometown of PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi:

Picture of Pepsi Unclear billboard in Greenwich, CT
In August, we crashed Pepsi’s biggest advertising campaign of the last two decades––the launch of Crystal Pepsi––to expose the truth of what is really inside Pepsi products.

Over the next few months, we will continue to escalate pressure in PepsiCo’s hometown until PepsiCo decision makers fix this problem once and for all.

The ecological devastation of Conflict Palm Oil is getting worse every single day. A recent article in Fortune magazine warns that palm oil could kill off wild orangutans in just 10 years unless we remedy the crisis urgently. And roughly 3.5 million palm oil plantation workers are suffering under the same system of devastation.

Tell PepsiCo: “Cut Conflict Palm Oil Now!”

PepsiCo relies on palm oil made cheaply, with exploited labor and forest destruction, to keep its profits high. But we know that for our forests and our collective future, we can’t and we won’t let that continue. We’ll stand with workers, with communities at the frontlines of palm oil expansion, and with the critical ecosystems that hang in the balance.

Together, we can drive real change to the forest floor, and break the link between human and workers’ rights violations, deforestation and climate destruction, and the snack foods that line our grocery store shelves. Take action today!