Greenpeace is going after Unilever, the makers of Dove beauty products. According to Greenpeace Unilever “are causing forest destruction, species extinction and climate change.”

The palm oil that is needed in products like those from Dove comes from companies who are irresponsibly destroying Indonesia’s rainforests to make way for their palm oil plantations.

Dove is not the only company that uses palm oil from destroyed rainforests. But they are the biggest single user of palm oil, in the world.

“Unilever pretends to be an environmentally responsible company, but what it is actually responsible for is destroying areas of rainforest, driving species extinction and speeding up global warming. Being one of the biggest users of palm oil on the planet, Unilever must stop buying palm oil from these companies and call for a halt on the destruction of Indonesian forests to grow palm oil.”

Greenpeace wants all companies, and not just Unilever, who are involved in palm oil production to commit to stopping further deforestation by supporting a moratorium on rainforest and peatlands. They have also set uo five criterias the palm oil industry must agree on:

• No new plantations within mapped forest areas
• No plantations resulting in the degradation of peatlands
• No plantations or expansion post November 2005 resulting in deforestation or degradation of high conservation value areas including peatlands
• No plantations or plantation expansion established on indigenous peoples and other forest dependent communities without their free prior and informed consent
• Establish full supply chain traceability and segregation systems which exclude palm oil that fails to meet the above criteria

If you want you can read “Burning up Borneo” (PDF), released April 2008, for more detailed scientific information of the campaign. You can also watch the campaign video (you can find the HD version below) and sign the open letter to Unilever.

Also: Alison Benjamin from the Guardian talks to Greenpeace executive director John Sauven about why Greenpeace are targeting Unilever in their weekly podcast.

Dove Onslaught(er) from Greenpeace on Vimeo.

Image credits: Greenpeace.Italia