Selling Girl Scout cookies is usually one of the biggest fundraiser for Troop 12026 in Jersey City, NJ, earning about $ 1,000 a year to apply for patches, membership fees and the costs of hosting an annual Halloween party for your community. But this year, the girls – 21 in all, between the ages of 10 and 15 – will be seated in the biscuit season in protest against the inclusion of palm oil in the ingredients of popular goodies.
The boycott comes after troop leader Gina Verdibello, who has served since 2013 and has two daughters in the troop, discovered a local news article about a petition initiated by a rural Tennessee girl called Olivia Chaffin, asking the organization to change completely for sustainable palm oil and promising to boycott cookie sales until a change is made. The petition, in which Chaffin denounces deforestation resulting from the production of palm oil, currently has more than 23,000 signatures. (Chaffin and his parents did not respond to Yahoo Life’s request for comment.)
With his keen curiosity, Verdibello went a little deeper into the controversy surrounding palm oil. In addition to environmental concerns, an Associated Press report published late last month found that palm oil production depends on child labor in Indonesia and Malaysia, which provide 85% of the oil supply. According to the AP, “it is estimated that tens of thousands of children” – some smuggled across borders and others working with their parents – work in dangerous conditions for little or no payment while being exposed to toxic chemicals, missing educational opportunities and navigating risks like trafficking, police detention and abuse.
Based on US customs records and other data, AP was able to trace child labor down to palm oil used in products launched by food brands, including Ferrero – one of two companies that makes Girl Scout cookies -, as well as Nestlé, Unilever, Kellogg’s, PepsiCo. Palm oil is also widely used in beauty and household products, from shampoo to soap and lipstick.
Verdibello – who, like Chaffin, was concerned that the Girl Scout’s cookie boxes listed “mixed sustainable palm oil” among the ingredients, meaning that not a single bit of sustainable origin – was moved to take a stand.
“[The AP article] it was very powerful, and I showed the girls why I wanted them to decide whether they wanted to sell cookies or not, and they all agreed, ”Verdibello, a member of the Jersey City Board of Education, told Yahoo Vida. “As much as they love the cookies and enjoy selling, they didn’t think it was right to do it until the Girl Scouts fixed the problem.”
The troop is not just running away from cookie sales, which began in many parts of the country, with Thin Mints and Trefoils now available for purchase online as a safe alternative solution in the middle of the pandemic. They are also talking about why they are not participating and doing their part to raise awareness.
Verdibello said he said to the girls, “If we’re going to do this, we’re going to have to bet everything. This is not just saying that we are not selling cookies, it is a great thing ”.
A press release issued by the troop says: “The members of the Girl Scout Troop 12026 are deeply disturbed by the information discovered by Olivia’s troop. As a result of this information, members of the Girl Scout Troop 12026 cannot in their right mind sell cookies that are intentionally produced by children who are unable to attend school and are forced to work for subsistence in dangerous and toxic conditions, while at the same time, producing a product that, when done irresponsibly, is causing deforestation, resulting in the destruction of the world’s tropical forests ”.
“Children shouldn’t have to work in these horrible conditions just for a few Girl Scout cookies,” said one troop member, while another said, “For a company that shows itself trying to raise girls, it certainly doesn’t educate girls in the countries of where you are using child labor. “
Verdibello says he had “positive feedback” from his community, with supporters offering to make financial donations to make up for the lack of fundraising. The responses from within the Scout organization, however, were tepid. Her local New Jersey wing tried to suggest some kind of compromise, such as raising awareness of palm oil without a boycott, while Girl Scouts of America offered a “more vague answer”.
Verdibello says national leaders have told her that they are trying to make their palm oil more sustainable, while minimizing the importance of used oil to preserve their cookies, insisting that it is a small trace of mixed oil that, even if removed , would not have a major impact on the large palm oil industry.
“That kind of response doesn’t make us feel any better. It’s still there, ”she says.
Her next step was to get the girls in her troop to start a letter campaign for “bakers [of the cookies], for politicians, for anyone who wants to listen. ”She is also connecting with Chaffin and has heard of other parents and troop leaders who were also motivated to stop selling cookies.
But Verdibello says he is aware that this is a problem that may not be solved until next year’s cookie season – which could pose long-term fundraising problems.
“People have been very generous, so I think we’re going to be fine this year and make the money we need,” she says. “But, thinking about the future, I also don’t know if we will be able to sell cookies next year. This is a big problem that I don’t know if we can solve overnight. A lot of advocacy work is needed ”.
In fact, the use of palm oil in Girl Scout cookies is a controversy that goes back more than a decade, a closed petition initiated by former Girl Scouts Rhiannon Tomtishen and Madison Vorva – who learned about deforestation linked to palm plantations and threatens who represents for orangutans while studying primates for a girl scout project – he obtained about 70,000 signatures. In its five-year campaign, the organization committed to showcasing a GreenPalm logo on cookie boxes, beginning with the 2012-13 cookie season, as a symbol of Scout efforts to raise awareness of environmental concerns associated with production of palm oil. In addition to supporting the use of sustainable palm oil, the Girl Scout leadership said it would ask bakers to limit the use of palm oil, which would henceforth only be added to recipes in the absence of an alternative.
Yahoo Life has not yet received a comment from the Girl Scouts. On December 30, the day after the publication of the AP article, the organization responded to criticism on Twitter, asking bakers and the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) to “act” against suppliers who “did not follow the ethical procedures ”.
“Child labor has no place in the making of Girl Scout cookies,” said a tweet in response to a mother who said her daughter would be among those who would not participate in the cookie season.
Child labor has no place in the production of Girl Scout Cookie. If certain suppliers are not following ethical procedures, we expect our bakers and RSPO to act quickly to rectify these exceptions, so that we can continue to advocate for best practices around the world.
– Girl Scouts (@girlscouts) December 30, 2020
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