A recently released TV advertisement highlights one company’s attempt to bring into the light the palm oil crisis. Iceland, a UK grocery store, published its Christmas ad called “Rang-tan,” but Clearcast, the British organization which reviews and approves British TV advertising, said the ad violates a rule established by the 2003 Communications Act that bans political advertising from ads.
The animated short film shows an orangutan swinging around in a young girl’s bedroom; the girl soon discovers that the orangutan’s home and family have been destroyed by palm oil plantations. Palm oil is a vegetable oil that’s found in roughly half of all packaged products sold in supermarkets. The palm oil industry has been responsible for extreme devastation throughout the world, but particularly in Indonesia, where orangutans are classified as “critically endangered”.
The ad encourages people to have “a Christmas without palm oil” and to reach out to their local stores to demand bans on the sale of products with palm oil.
