FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 20, 2004 — Rainforest Relief

Rainforest Relief To Host Educational Fund-Raiser On Environmental Awareness

NEW YORK, N.Y. — MConsumers, conservationalists and nature lovers alike are challenged to realize the power of purchase by attending next week’s Rainforest Delights buffet dinner and dance party hosted by one of NYC’s most well-known and well-respected environmental non-profit organizations, Rainforest Relief.

Held at 6:30 p.m. on Feb. 26 at The Brecht Forum (Rainforest Relief’s office), located on the 10th floor of 122 W. 27th St. (between 6th and 7th Avenues), the event will feature an array of food from various rainforest countries, a cash bar consisting of beer, wine and Rainforest Relief’s special mixed drinks, as well as educational slide shows and videos, door prizes, a raffle, sales and displays of rainforest-friendly products, photos and live music. Those who attend are asked to donate $20 ($15 for students and low-income persons).

Tim Keating, Rainforest Relief executive director who co-founded the organization in 1989 in response to the global need to regulate and reduce the consumption of material destructively taken from rainforests by industrialized countries, said the purpose of the fund-raiser is not only to raise money to help fund their efforts to protect the Earth’s rainforests, but to reach out and educate the general public on important environmental issues.

“Every human relies on other living things in order for them to sustain life, and at the rate we’re going now, humans will have reduced the diversity of life on Earth by 50 percent over the next 50 years due to the overconsumption of living materials from rainforests,” Keating said. “People may not yet feel the impact of this destruction on their daily lives, but what’s actually happening is the global, biological cataclysmic elimination of Earth’s species at a faster rate than occurred when an asteroid hit Earth 65 million years ago.”

Rainforests are cleared and destroyed at the rate of an acre-and-a-half every second due to the high demand by consumers for products such as coffee, chocolate, bananas, beef and processed meat, oil, gold, paper, steel (iron), aluminum and tropical hardwoods like mahogany and lauan plywood. Consumers, however, have the power to preserve rainforests by regulating and even ending their own use of materials and products derived from rainforests.

Keating said most people are unaware of the environmental impact caused by consumption of these products, or even the fact that many of the products they use come from the destruction of rainforests. There is also a solid connection between consumers and those who supply retailer shelves with rainforest-derived products.

“There are two front lines in the battle to spare the rainforests: one is between the farmer or logger and the trees, the other is between the consumer and the store shelf,” Keating said. “Demand and destruction are two sides of the same coin. Without the demand, loggers wouldn’t be able to get paid for mahogany. Without the logging, there wouldn’t be any mahogany on the market to excite consumers.”

He said that while the Rainforest Relief doesn’t have all the answers to end the destruction of rainforests, they do offer many easy and accessible alternatives for consumers to be proactive in their daily lives. Rainforest-safe products such as recycled plastic lumber, palm wood, bamboo, ForestBananas, ForestChocolate and ForestCoffee are all less destructive than the unsustainable rainforest, tropical woods and industrial agricultural products so many consumers are still using.

The public is encouraged to attend the Rainforest Delights fund-raiser to increase their awareness of the destruction of rainforests and find out how they can help preserve the Earth. For more information on the fund-raiser, call the Rainforest Relief at (212) 243-2394, or go to their Web site at www.rainforestrelief.org.

About Rainforest Relief - www.rainforestrelief.org

Rainforest Relief works to end the loss of the world’s tropical and temperate rainforests and protect their human and non-human inhabitants by reducing demand for the products of rainforest logging, mining and agricultural conversion, through education, advocacy, research and action.

Rainforest Relief is a mostly volunteer-based environmental organization that has become a nationally recognized leader in rainforest wood research and campaigning. Their main office is in New York City, with chapter offices and part-time staff and volunteers working in Portland, OR, New York State, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles and Costa Rica. Since major campaigning began in 1992, Rainforest Relief has prevented the use of more unsustainable tropical woods than any group in U.S. history. Cities and towns from California to Florida to New York have ended their use of rainforest woods or shifted to independently certified woods in response to Rainforest Relief campaigns.

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