By Pepsi is about to launch its biggest advertising campaign of the last two decades. Using Facebook, Twitter, and shameless nostalgia, Pepsi is resurrecting its ”iconic clear soda from the 90’s,” Crystal Pepsi. The buzz online is huge, so activists across the globe are crashing its launch to expose the truth of what is really inside PepsiCo products.
Why crash a seemingly harmless ad campaign? PepsiCo is not nearly as fun loving as it would have you think. The company uses immense amounts of Conflict Palm Oil every year to make its chips and chewy granola bars. As one of the cheapest vegetable oils on the market, palm oil is driving the last populations of critically endangered Sumatran elephants to the edge of extinction in the wild.
Let’s be clear – we need to bring back healthy populations of the Sumatran elephant, not extinct sodas.
Making matters even worse, roughly 3.5 million people work on palm oil plantations across Indonesia and Malaysia, and each day these workers face abuses such as systematically being cheated out of fair pay and benefits, exposed to toxic chemicals, and forced to bring their children and spouses to work to meet unreasonable daily quotas. A recent report by Rainforest Action Network, Indonesian labor advocacy organization OPPUK and the International Labor Rights Forum documented many of these abuses in the operations of its controversial Indonesian palm oil supplier and snack food producer, Indofood.
How can Pepsi expect consumers to pay for its faux nostalgic colas when it’s business partner in Indonesia won’t pay its palm oil workers a living wage?
For the past two years, concerned consumers around the world have demanded PepsiCo take action and address its Conflict Palm Oil problem. Instead of taking meaningful and decisive action, PepsiCo has continued with business-as-usual tactics like relying on Facebook, Twitter, and slick marketing to inspire nostalgia and generate sales, all while hoping people ignore the destruction, human rights abuses, and extinction of amazing species like the orangutan or the Sumatran elephant lurking behind its massive profits.
Luckily, people across the global are not letting PepsiCo get away with this greenwash!
Post this link – ran.org/pepsiunclear – to Pepsi’s Facebook page. You could say something like:
Hey Pepsi, be clear with your customers – slick marketing and 90’s nostalgia won’t hide the extinction of the Sumatran elephant in your products. End the deforestation now! pepsiunclear.com
With your help when people think of Crystal Pepsi they won’t think of the 90’s or a clear bottle of soda, they will think about making a stand to protect Indonesia’s rainforests, the last Sumatran elephants and the millions of workers that bear the true costs of cheap palm oil.
