Earlier this week, RAN activists and volunteer Yale students disrupted a networking event where PepsiCo was recruiting at the Yale School of Management. RAN Organizers Pearl Robinson and JeNaé Nicole Taylor, along with several Yale students, delivered a letter to PepsiCo’s Scott Greene, a Finance Manager, detailing the urgent need for the company to cut Conflict Palm Oil. Activists also stood near Pepsi’s table during the event with signs reading, “We won’t work for rainforest destruction. We won’t work for human rights or labor abuses. We won’t work for climate change.”
PepsiCo is making an effort to appeal to Millennials, and portray itself as a responsible, socially aware and sustainable company. But we are not fooled by this propaganda. While PepsiCo continues to use Conflict Palm Oil, we know that critical forests are still falling and carbon-rich peatlands are still burning. We know that communities’ land and livelihoods are still under attack. We know that workers on plantations across Indonesia and Malaysia are still abused: cheated out of fair pay and benefits, exposed to toxic chemicals, forced to bring their children and spouses to work and sometimes enslaved. We know that globally important ecosystems like the Leuser Ecosystem are being destroyed right before our eyes.
Just last week, PepsiCo released its Palm Oil Action Plan Progress Report, which revealed its ongoing use of palm oil from unknown sources, as well as from suppliers with known connections to the exploitation of workers and forest destruction. This is why RAN is working with students at campuses across the U.S. to communicate face to face with PepsiCo, and say that we will not work for deforestation, human rights abuses, species extinction or climate change. Our future cannot include Conflict Palm Oil.
RAN activists and Yale students demonstrate that we will not work for Conflict Palm Oil.
Pepsi will be recruiting at university campuses across the country this fall, and we plan to be there to say no more deforestation, no more human rights and labor abuses, no more species extinction and no more climate change. No more Conflict Palm Oil.
If you’d like to take action with us on your campus, or a campus near you, email or call Kelsey: Kelsey@ran.org | (415) 599-6672
