Palm oil protests target UK Unilever sites

Dozens of environmental demonstrators managed to enter Unilever's Merseyside site yesterday and scaled the walls of its London headquarters.

About 40 members of Greenpeace entered the multinational's plant in Wirral while about a dozen dressed in orang-utan outfits demonstrated outside its London headquarters, with some climbing its front walls.

The environmental group is demonstrating against Unilever's use of palm oil, which is an ingredient in foods and soaps as well as a bio-fuel added to diesel for cars.

Greenpeace says the peatland forests of Indonesia, one of the last remaining habitats of the orang-utan, is being damaged to provide palm oil. Destruction of these forests rapidly adds to climate change too, it said, because preparation of land for new palm oil plantations releases large amounts of carbon dioxide as it is drained and burnt.

Greenpeace executive director John Sauven said: "Greenpeace is demanding Unilever publicly calls for an end to the expansion of palm oil into forest and peatland areas and stops trading with suppliers that continue to destroy rainforests."

Unilever owns many of the world's consumer product brands in foods, beverages, cleaning agents and personal care products.

It was not immediately known how long the protests would continue. Merseyside and City of London police both said they were monitoring the situation.