Palm Oil Shopping App Helps Endangered Orangutans 

    The Saint Louis Zoo is urging its visitors to use a smartphone app to help save critically endangered orangutans. Their native habitat, rain forests of Sumatra and Borneo, is being cleared to make oil palm plantations. Palm oil is in thousands of consumer goods. Most packaged foods contain some palm oil. The detergent made from palm oil, SDS or SLS, is found in most products that clean, from toothpaste to glass cleaner. Vitamin A palmitate is added to reduced fat milk. The app, created by the Cheyanne Mountain Zoo, scans products to find if their palm oil is sustainably farmed on pre-existing cultivated lands. Consumer pressure may induce companies to use only orangutan-friendly palm oil, and save these great apes from extinction.