No Need to Skip the Sweets

I came across an article on CNN talking about how the use of palm oil is damaging to orangutans. They wrote the article because palm oil is often used in different types of candy such as, Skittles, Milky Way and all other MARS products. You can read more here.

My initial reaction was to text my mom and makes sure she was conscious of the issue when buying candy for trick-or- treaters this year. As I read on, I realized that this might not be necessary. The author, John D. Sutter suggests that it is best to start at the root of the problem. It is hard to get people to abandon their tradition on Halloween. It is much more convenient to run to the store and buy whatever kind of candy is the cheapest, rather than reading every label and seeing which types of candy don't have palm oil.  Moms already have enough to worry about this time of year.

So then what can we do to help? Turning a blind eye has had a lot of consequences in the past when it comes to the environment. Instead of skipping sweets on halloween, Sutter sends us to a website on which people post pictures of the orangutans and other parts of the rainforest to raise awareness. The website is called Rainforest Action Network. It basically shows snack food companies and other industries the  affect they have on the environment and lets people get involved who are interested in the issue.

I think that this is a very effective way of going about  raising awareness and eventually solving the problem of extinction and pollution.  This, rather than telling people to stop buying candy and snacks, is going to make more of a difference because this gives people a reason to care. Looking through the website it makes it easier for me to understand the issue, and the convenience  of the links makes getting involved just a click away. This is the right way to make people care about an issue.