Welcome to YouChoose, a blog where we explore ways of living sustainably. As Halloween is getting closer I wanted to share some information that can help us make this celebration Earth friendly.
As we all know the beloved Halloween trick or treating tradition has become big business. The stores are full of bags of candies of all sorts and because we are always pressed for time we purchase bags and bags of candies many of which stay in our pantry for a long time afterward. Many of the “big brand” candies unfortunately contain palm oil. As discussed in previous posts palm oil causes enormous environmental damage and it is one of the major drivers of deforestation.
If you want to celebrate an Earth-friendly Halloween please read the ingredients in the candies you purchase and make sure to buy only those that don’t list palm oil among them. This is hard, but you still have several good choices available in general stores or you can choose to bake your own cookies if you have the time.
If you do decide to buy palm oil free candies, I am providing here a link to the WWF rating of corporations based on their deforestation record. You can copy and paste the link provided below into your browser, find your preferred candy company and decide if you want to buy their product.
http://palmoilscorecard.panda.org/#/scores
As you can see in the WWF analysis, no company produces 100% traceable and sustainable palm oil. Even purchasing from the high scoring companies means encouraging deforestation to some degree so it is better to keep that to a minimum.
In case you want to spend half hour baking I am posting here a nice recipe for pumpkin cookies. I tried it myself for the first time and it came out good.
The YouChoose app provides several links and information on food products that are unsustainable and bad for the environment.
Do you want to contribute to this blog? Send me your thoughts at info@choosesustainable.org and I’ll add them to this blog.
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