Rain Forest Alliance “Follow the Frog"

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Agency
Max Joseph
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Original
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Words
428
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Year (Maybe)
2012

You are a good person. You spend time with your family. You work out at the gym. You conserve water while showering. You like nice clothes. You give to charity. You recycle. You drive a Prius but you use your bike when you can. You enjoy the occasional distraction at work and you always send a card on Mother's day. Always. But there's a part of you that tells yourself that you are not so good; that you could be doing more; that the world is falling apart at the seams and all you’ve been doing is yoga. One day you see that the rainforest is being destroyed at a staggering rate of 32 million acres a year. That's the equivalent of one football field every 78 seconds. You feel bad, angry, guilty. You've been apathetic for too long. You want to do something about it. You must do something about it. Well this is what you're not going to do. You're not going to quit your job, leave your family, get on the next flight to Nicaragua, take a bus to the edge of the jungle, then hoof it across rivers, lakes and streams on a quest to the very heart of the rainforest. You're not going to ingratiate yourself with the local tribesmen, go to great lengths to earn their respect and trust. It is around now that you realize you are living out the cliche gringo fantasy of becoming an honorary native and leading the resistance forces. But screw it. If they can do it, so can you. You're not going to coordinate an Occupy the Rainforest movement, realize it's hopeless, summon the power of the gods, lead a revolution against the deforesters and their multinational employers in an apocalyptic, only to awaken two days later in an El Salvadorian hospital with two toes missing on your left foot, hobble out of Central America, up through Mexico, across the Sierra Madre, where you break down, have your first cigarette in four years, accidentally start a wildfire killing off the endangered species that once served as your occupational distraction, finally make it back home only to find you've been replaced at work by a guy named TJ and that things at home are not what they used to be. You're not going to do any of these things. But what you can do is follow the frog. Buying Rainforest Alliance Certified products ensures the future of our rainforests so that you don't have to do the things you shouldn't do anyway. Just follow the frog.