Featured Image Credit: ETONLINE
Whether you plan on trick or treating or staying at home and giving out candy, this Halloween YOU can help wild animals and their habitats.
How does buying candy help animals out in the wild?
Most Halloween candy and many other foods contain palm oil — it can also be found in your favorite lipstick and the bar of hand soap in your bathroom. It has turned into a huge commodity! Forests are demolished and turned into palm oil farms, taking away habitats for animals like Sumatran Tigers and Orangutans.
Due to the lack of forest monitoring and conservation efforts, the amount of palm oil farms is rapidly increasing. When the farms are created, it causes an increase of carbon pollution into the atmosphere because we are losing the natural capital and ecological benefit produced from the forests.
However, there are companies, such as Hershey’s and Wonka, that use sustainably sourced palm oil in their Halloween sweets. Sustainably sourced palm oil is made at “palm oil plantations that comply with the environmental standards of the Roundtable of Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO)” (David Suzuki Foundation, WHAT YEAR).
By purchasing candy and food made with sustainably sourced palm oil, we are telling many unsustainable palm oil companies “NO MORE!”
The Woodland Park Zoo has recently released a list of what companies use sustainable palm oil in their candies.
The SeaWorld-Busch Gardens Conservation Fund (SWBGCF) is also very vocal in the palm oil use issue. They are actively participating and coordinating with Orangutan projects in Malaysia, and Indonesia (where a lot of palm oil is produced).
SeaWorld and Busch Gardens have also implemented public awareness and educational programs within their parks, and have a website with “Animal InfoBooks” so you can learn more during your visit and how to apply what you learn about conservation and the environment in your home.
Now, when Halloween is over, it is important that we keep spreading the message of using sustainably sourced palm oil. This can be done by reading labels on our regular foods and miscellaneous products.
If you love animals and the environment as we do here on Awesome Ocean, then this is truly a great way to help spread a conservation message this Halloween!