Girl Scouts Are Awesome: Saving the Rainforest From Their Cookies

Girl Scout cookies seem innocent enough. Besides the sugar and calories, what harm could they possibly cause? Quite a bit it turns out. Girl Scout cookies use a whole lot of palm oil, the controversial ingredient that is inextricably linked to rainforest destruction, violations of Indigenous rights, and the extinction of endangered species like orangutans, tigers, elephants, and rhinoceros.

When two young scouts, Rhiannon Tomtishen and Madison Vorva, learned of the impact of the famous cookies, they were horrified, and started a campaign to get the Girl Scouts USA organization to switch recipes. The girls wrote to the organization, but their pleas only received a curt reply. The national org claimed that they had no say in the ingredients that their baker uses. Considering the size of the annual Girl Scout cookie order, I'd bet anything that if the Girl Scouts USA insisted, that baker would do whatever they wanted.

Last week, the two girls raised the stakes by partnering with the Rainforest Action Network and Change.org to put pressure on the national headquarters and CEO Kathy Cloninger.

As Tomtishen says, "rainforest destruction and orangutan extinction have no place in Girl Scout cookies or any other consumer product."

Their petition on Change.org provides some background:

Five years ago, Madi and Rhiannon were completing research for their Girl Scout Bronze Awards when they discovered a cold hard fact about the much-sought-after commodity they’d been selling each year: Girl Scout cookies — including all but one of the 17 different brands — are packed with palm oil, an ingredient that causes clearcutting of irreplaceable rainforests and threatens the survival of humankind’s closest relative, orangutans. The two sixth graders were shocked.

They wrote to Girl Scouts USA about their concerns, but got nowhere. They've taken their campaign public and enlisted the help of the Union of Concerned Scientists, the Center for Biological Diversity, Cultural Survival, Orangutan Foundation International, and RAN, but top brass at Girl Scouts USA remain unmoved.

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Here's video of Tomtishen and Vorva explaining their case.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfJSnGLrQ80&feature=player_embedded

So what can you do to help? Start by pressuring Girl Scouts USA CEO Kathy Cloninger with this petition on Change.org. They're also making public pleas on the Girl Scouts USA Facebook and Twitter pages. Here's a whole list of ways you can help pressure the Girl Scouts USA to do the right thing and clean up their cookies.