Case Study
You work for a makeup and beauty company – ‘Fox Beauty’. A customer tweets and asks if you use palm oil in your products. You ask your manager and she lets you know that the company does use it in a lot of the products. You direct message the customer and give them the answer. The customer tweets ‘Another company using palm oil. Boycott Fox Beauty!! #PalmOilAlarmCall’ and sends you the following message:
‘Large areas of tropical forests and other ecosystems with high conservation values have been cleared to make room for vast monoculture oil palm plantations – destroying critical habitat for many endangered species, including rhinos, elephants and tigers.
In some cases, the expansion of plantations has led to the eviction of forest-dwelling peoples.’
You decide to bring this up at the next ‘green team’ meeting.
- What could the company do about this?
- Are there alternatives to palm oil?
- What are other companies doing about palm oil?
- What would you tell the customer
It is rare that there is just one way to respond to a scenario or situation, so do not consider that the responses you have to the above scenario will be judged as right or wrong. Share your scenario with a work colleague or friend and ask them to tell you whether they think you have responded appropriately. Ask them to challenge your response if necessary. You do not need to submit this task for assessment unless asked to do so by your assessor
