We’ve got PepsiCo’s attention, and we know that the company is feeling the heat. Over the past 5 months, we’ve hunted down PepsiCo’s biggest and most expensive advertising campaigns—from new product launches, to online marketing campaigns, public speaking events and college campus recruitment fairs—and called out the company for its refusal to take meaningful action to eliminate Conflict Palm Oil from its products.
PepsiCo prides itself on it’s “Performance with Purpose” model. But these past few months have proven that PepsiCo is still not “performing with purpose” when it comes to its palm oil supply chain. Here’s a look back at the pressure PepsiCo has been up against:
August 2016
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We brought our campaign to PepsiCo’s doorstep—the Global Headquarter in Purchase, NY—and increased the pressure on PepsiCo to take responsibility for its impact on the rainforests and global climate, critical endangered species like the Sumatran orangutan and elephant, and the families who live and work there.
Billboard along Hwy 1 in Greenwich, CT—located in Fairfield County and the hometown of PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi.
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We crashed the re-launch party of PepsiCo’s 90’s throwback drink, Crystal Pepsi, as well as the company’s ad campaign. Slick marketing and 90’s nostalgia can’t hide the conflict in PepsiCo’s palm oil supply chain, which we made crystal clear at pepsiunclear.com, exposing the truth of what is really inside PepsiCo’s products: deforestation and human and labor rights abuses.
With the help of a team of palm oil activists, we let PepsiCo know that modern day slavery and rainforest destruction are “not where it’s at.”
September 2016
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Palm oil activists saturated New York City with posters and signs exposing PepsiCo’s use of Conflict Palm Oil.
If you’ve been in New York, you may have seen these signs around.
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An international coalition including Rainforest Action Network (RAN), SumOfUs, Wildlife Asia, and Oceanic Preservation Society (OPS), together with local volunteers and supporters, delivered a quarter million signatures to PepsiCo’s Purchase, NY headquarters in a 10 foot Pepsi bottle. Watch the video of the petition delivery here!
You, and the hundreds of thousands of people who have signed our petitions and supported the campaign, already know about the Conflict Palm Oil in PepsiCo’s supply chain. 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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RAN partnered with student activists and began the first of several campus recruitment disruptions, where students interrupted Pepsi recruiters on campus to say: “We won’t work for rainforest destruction, species extinction, or human rights and labor abuses. We won’t work for Conflict Palm Oil.”
Activists delivered a letter to the Pepsi recruiter and stood next to the company’s table during a Yale networking event with signs reading.
October 2016
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PepsiCo, and others in the Snack Food 20, put a so-called ‘sustainable’ palm oil label on their products, but this unfortunately does not mean that the palm oil PepsiCo sources is truly responsible. Rainforest Action Network, Indonesian labor rights advocacy organization OPPUK, and International Labor Rights Forum (ILRF) lodged a formal complaint against palm oil giant Indofood, PepsiCo’s Joint Venture Partner, with the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), the leading certifying body of palm oil. This complaint comes from multiple cases of documented labor abuses on Indofood plantations. Now is the time for all RSPO members, including PepsiCo, to ensure that the certification system upholds its standards.
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Campus Recruitment Disruptions continued across the country, with students calling out and confronting PepsiCo executives at schools in Oklahoma, California, Connecticut and New Jersey.
OSU students prepare to deliver a letter to a PepsiCo recruiter on campus.
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RAN and our Executive Director, Lindsey Allen, were featured in the film Before the Flood, which is now the most viewed documentary in history. In the film, Lindsey explains the problem with Conflict Palm Oil and how it’s production is linked to increased climate pollution. PepsiCo and other palm oil laggards are directly named in the film.
November 2016
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During the Fast Company Innovation Festival in New York City, RAN activists confronted Indra Nooyi, CEO of PepsiCo, on the company’s connection to the exploitation of Indonesian palm oil workers. Watch the video and join us in confronting PepsiCo executives by taking action!
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On the same day—November 11th—RAN activists confronted PepsiCo executives in Connecticut AND Arizona. In Arizona, we stopped by The Outlook Leadership Conference in Scottsdale, Arizona, where Al Carey, CEO of PepsiCo North America, was speaking. Later that afternoon, Forestry students at Yale’s graduate school, questioned Indra Nooyi’s leadership and PepsiCo’s palm oil supply chain.
RAN Activists at the Outlook Leadership Conference in Arizona, after confronting PepsiCo CEO Al Carey.
Over the course of the three years of this campaign, PepsiCo has failed over and over again to take meaningful action and address its Conflict Palm Oil problem. PepsiCo’s customers around the planet have clearly communicated their demands for the company to clean up its act, and its peers have begun to show that it can be done. PepsiCo must demand that its suppliers—regardless of where their operations are in the world—halt the expansion of palm oil at the expense of forests, our climate and the rights of local communities and workers. We’re reaching the tipping point in our efforts to transform the way that palm oil is produced – join us in calling on PepsiCo to finally make a stand and Cut Conflict Palm Oil!
