Wildlife Conservation

What’s black and white and loved all over?

Su-Lin is not just our mascot. She represents the unique (and rare!) qualities you’ll find in all of ZenSoy’s organic products, and our commitment to doing our part in preserving the environment. That’s why ZenSoy donates 5% of profits to international wildlife organizations so that giant pandas like Su-Lin will survive. Yet most people don’t know much about the giant panda, or what they can do to help this gentle, endangered creature.

Today, there are less than 1,000 pandas living in six small regions of inland China, where the panda’s main food supply, bamboo, is the greatest. At birth, the panda weighs no more than a stick of butter, but adults can weigh more than 220 pounds, and usually live 20-25 years.

Pandas spend 12 hours a day eating about 83 pounds of bamboo. Pandas live mainly on the ground but have the ability to climb trees as well. While the species does not hibernate, it often relocates to lower altitudes in the winter and spring.

Why is the panda endangered?

Historically the giant panda ranged over an extended area of southeastern Asia. Today they survive only along the eastern front of the Tibetan plateau of China in three neighboring provinces.

Climatic changes during the last 2,000 years caused the temperate deciduous forests, suitable for the bamboo that pandas depend on, to retreat to these remote highlands. Bamboo shortages force pandas to look for food, but with humans taking up so much of the panda’s natural habitat, pandas face starvation and isolation. ZenSoy believes in living in harmony with nature and protecting the earth. So celebrate the soy you enjoy knowing that you are helping the pandas.