Rainforests

This blog first appeared on Ethical Corporation.

Last week saw Sinar Mas, one of the largest conglomerates in Indonesia, come to London for a press conference to try and turn the tables on two years of Greenpeace investigations into their deforestation practices.

The palm oil producer came to explain that they are a responsible company, that they don't destroy rainforests and how the likes of Unilever, Nestlé and Kraft had been mistaken to suspend them from their supply chains.

They claimed a new 'verification exercise' would prove Greenpeace has got it wrong.

Laura from our international office updates on what's been going on since Nestlé's Facebook page went into meltdown.

"Social media: as you can see, we're learning as we go. Thanks for the comments." On 19 March, that was the status message on Nestlé's Facebook fan page - which had already been under siege for three days. The message didn't stay up there for long but it was obviously in recognition of the page administrator's poor handling of the comments and criticisms that had been streaming in since the launch of our KitKat ad spoof.

Those of us following social media/marketing blogs know what happened to Nestlé's online reputation - it quickly became synonomous with words like: "disaster", "kitkatastrophe", "nightmare", "meltdown" and so on. But what did all of those Facebook comments do for Indonesia's rainforests?

Glastonbury is the big fixture in our festival calendar but throughout the summer our events crew are setting up shop at other big country bashes. They're getting people involved with our campaign to save the rainforests (see our new forest defenders making monkeys of themselves in the slideshow above) as well as providing plenty of activities to provide an alternative to the music stages.

Latitude and Womad have been and gone, but this weekend it's their first visit to the Big Chill. If you're heading that way look out for the Banksy backdrop where you can put yourself in the picture and declare your support, like hundreds of other people have already done.

In Brazil, moves are afoot to amend a piece of legislation which has been protecting the Amazon rainforest for over 70 years, and not for the better. If the changes are voted through, it could mean that the area of the Amazon which can be legally destroyed will double, and it's the backers of these changes - the agriculture, biofuels and energy barons - who stand to benefit as they argue that pesky forest laws are a hindrance to economic development.