Few places in the world will allow a man to thrill the wits out of himself in a screaming tunnel whilst simultaneously appreciating the fragile beauty of coral reef and pristine Indonesian jungle, more than Greenbush. Michel Bourez. Photo:Alex Laurel.

1. Just Say No to Palm Oil

This palm oil stuff is evil. I’m not sure if this is relevant, or even sound ethics, but bad stuff happening to the Indo jungle seems worse than other surf-less jungles. As wrong-headed as that might sound, if we can care a bit about environments we have some kind of relationship with, or handle on, well that’s a good thing, isn’t it?

85% of all palm oil globally comes from Indo, Malaysia and Borneo. In Indonesia, vast palm oil plantations are cut from ancient rainforest, home to rare animals like the Sumatran elephant, Sumatran tigers and Orang Utangs. The Indonesian government has set aside a whopping 18 million hectares of rainforest to palm oil production by 2020 (source: Rainforest Action network). Deforestation is responsible for 80% of Indonesia’s CO2, making it the 3rd largest Greenhouse gas emitter in the world (after USA and China).

Whether you’ve been to Indo, or not, whether you’ve had the Greenbush bush as backdrop, or not, you should have some kind of appreciation for keeping the jungle jungle. If you’ve been on Facebook and seen those pics of the dead, burnt orangutang covering its face and felt physically sick, well, haven’t we all?

What to do: Read the ingredients, boycott palm oil products. e.g Nutella.

• It might only say ‘vegetable oil’. If it does and it comes from Asia, it’s palm oil.
• If saturated fat is 40% of total fat, it’s palm oil.
• Watch out! Just because it says ‘organic’ it might still contain palm oil. Many organic products contain it, read the label… and then scrutinize the fuck out of it.