BAT pulls out of Burma
Japan rejects Icelandic whale meat
Toxic chemicals in Disney pyjamas
Baku-Ceyhan pipeline gets government backing
and more...
Double
standards on toxic ships
While controversy rages in the UK over
the US naval “ghost ships” due to be dismantled in Hartlepool,
European countries are quietly transporting their waste ships to developing
countries in breach of international law.
Currently around 600 ships a year are broken worldwide. Around 90% of
these go to one of five shipbreaking countries - India, Bangladesh,
China, Pakistan and Turkey - where environmental and worker safety standards
can be appalling.
Currently HMS Intrepid is berthed at Portsmouth awaiting export to an
overseas breakers yard, believed to be in Turkey. HMS Intrepid contains
40 tonnes of asbestos, as well as PCBs, lead and heavy fuel oil.
If the Royal Navy ship is exported to any of the major shipbreaking
countries it will break ‘The Basle Convention on the Control of
Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal’
which bans the export of hazardous wastes from OECD to non-OECD countries.
Two other Royal Naval vessels - the ‘Olwen’ and the ‘Olna’
- which were sold to German shipbreaking company Eckhardt in 2000, ended
up being broken on the beaches of the notorious scrapyards at Alang
in India. This was after the ships were rejected by the Turkish government
because of the levels of toxic material on-board. Environmental safeguards
are non-existent in Alang and there is almost no safety equipment for
a workforce that includes children.
Commenting on the situation, Blake Lee-Harwood, Campaigns Director for
Greenpeace in the UK, said: “Britain should look after its own
toxic ships or clean them up and export them as uncontaminated scrap.
It’s completely unacceptable that Royal Naval ships end up being
broken by barefoot children with lump hammers in the Third World rather
than dismantled using state-of-the-art technology.”
Readers can inform Greenpeace about the whereabouts of toxic ships by
logging onto their website. Step up pressure to send the US ships back
by writing to the UK Ministers at the Department of Environment, Food
and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) and the US Maritime Administration. Contact
details are available from Friends of the Earth.
Help Greenpeace’s campaign by logging on to:
http://greenpeaceweb.org/shipbreak/finalvoyage.asp
or got to the Friends
of the Earth webpage
BAT pulls out of Burma
UK tobacco company, BAT recently announced
that it had sold its share of the company’s factory in Burma. The
move marks a victory for a campaign started by the Burma Campaign less
than a year ago.
“This is a huge victory,” said John Jackson, Director of the
Burma Campaign UK. “They had to be dragged out kicking and screaming
but at least they are out. If a company like BAT can be forced out of
Burma, any company can be.”
In July 2003 even the British government backed the campaign and asked
BAT to leave Burma. The company has been deluged with thousands of campaign
postcards and emails from campaigners in over 50 countries.
BAT is just the latest in a long line of companies to have pulled out
of Burma following campaigns by the Burma Campaign UK. Earlier this
year Kuoni announced it was ending tourist trips to Burma. The Burma
Campaign has also succeeded in getting Premier Oil, Triumph International
and almost every major high street retailer out of the country.
“BAT were one of the last major British companies operating in
Burma,” said John Jackson. “We will now shift our focus to
campaigning for a ban on imports of Burmese gems and timber into the
UK and EU. They are an increasingly important source of income for the
regime.”
Readers can find out which companies operate in Burma and petition Kofi
Annan, Secretary General of the United Nations, to take action to free
Aung San Suu Kyi from the Burma
Campaign UK’s website or calling 020 7324 4710.
Japan
rejects Iceland’s whale meat
Just weeks after the close of its first whale hunting season in 14 years,
Iceland has suffered a serious blow to its expansive whaling plans from
its greatest political ally, Japan, which has said NO to imports of
whale products from Iceland. This follows news that the meat from the
36 minke whales landed received a very tepid response from Icelandic
consumers. Iceland, Norway and Japan have now killed over 25,000 whales
since the IWC moratorium began in 1986.
Like Iceland, Japan gets around the IWC’s moratorium on commercial
whaling by conducting two so-called Scientific Whaling programmes. Despite
cutting prices, Japan is finding it hard to sell all the meat from its
hunts and has even subsidised its sale to school lunch programmes.
Since the whaling operation started in August, the Icelandic government
has ignored diplomatic protests from 23 countries and threats from the
public overseas to boycott fish and other Icelandic exports. The government
has also faced strong domestic opposition from Iceland’s valuable
tourism industry. A survey of whale watchers conducted in Iceland last
year before the whaling commenced revealed that a quarter of the tourists
would not have come to Iceland if it had been whaling.
Greenpeace is currently running a campaign “Icelandic Tourism vs.
Whaling.” The campaign group is asking people to help convince
Iceland not to resume commercial whaling, simply by pledging to travel
there if they end the hunt.
Readers can sign Greenpeace’s pledge online at http://act.greenpeace.org/col/get?i=959&sk=std3&la=en
The RSPCA suggests that consumers can also take a stand by thinking
twice about buying Icelandic fish. A significant amount of cod consumed
in the UK comes from Iceland. Ask your supermarket to express its concern
to Iceland over the whale killing.
You can also email the Icelandic government from the RSPCA
website.
More information about the protection of whales, dolphins and their
environment can also be obtained from the Whale
and Dolphin Conservation Society at Brookfield House, 38 St. Paul
Street, Chippenham, Wiltshire SN15 1LY.
Tel: 0870 870 0027, email:info@wdcs.org
To infertility and
beyond!
In November, Greenpeace attached warning stickers to Disney children’s
pyjamas that contain toxic chemicals yet remain on sale to the public.
The warning stickers read: “DANGER! Chemicals in this product contaminate
children.”
In tests on four pairs of Disney-branded pyjamas available at The Disney
Store and other major retailers, a toxic chemical was found called nonylphenol,
which can interfere with human DNA and affect sperm production in mammals.
Also present in the children’s garments were phthalates, which
can cause liver, kidney and testicular damage and are banned from teething
toys under emergency European legislation.
Oliver Knowles, Greenpeace Toxics Campaigner, said: “Perhaps it
would be more apt if Buzz Lightyear’s catchphrase became ‘To
infertility and beyond!’”
The products affected are: Buzz Lightyear pyjamas for boys; Piglet pyjamas;
Tigger pyjamas with caption ‘100% Cheeky’; Tigger pyjamas
with caption ‘Come on in little buddy. The water’s great!’
Greenpeace believes the toxic chemicals are in the garments as a result
of the inks and PVC plastic film used in the design.
As a result of the campaign, Disney stores, along with Debenhams and
Mothercare, which have also been stocking Disney pyjamas, have now withdrawn
the offending garments from sale. However, on 14th November, ASDA and
Woolworths were still selling pyjamas containing these harmful chemicals.
Although it is good news that some retailers are beginning to recognise
the seriousness of this issue by withdrawing from sale some of the pyjamas
concerned, Greenpeace wants retailers to act immediately to remove all
pyjamas containing chemicals that contaminate children.
The test results come at a crucial time. EU Commissioners have recently
been debating the strength of new legislation which is being drafted
to regulate the chemical industry. The proposed legislation, called
REACH, has at its core a principle of substitution, i.e. if a company
is using a hazardous chemical in a product, when a safer alternative
exists, it will be legally obliged to stop using it.
However, EU Commissioners have been successfully lobbied by the chemical
industry, which fears that implementing the substitution principle would
be too costly. As a result, the recent discussions have resulted in
a weakening, rather than strengthening, of chemical regulations. This
means that toxic products such as these Disney pyjamas will continue
to be made.
Greenpeace is urging supporters to visit its website
and:
• Email Patricia Hewitt, Secretary of State for Trade and Industry
and tell her that the legislation must be strengthened to take unnecessarily
toxic products from the supermarket shelves.
• Visit the Chemical Home - Greenpeace’s new interactive website
- which illustrates how your body is contaminated with harmful chemicals
via brand-name products such as Disney. The website tells you more about
which products to buy instead.
• Read more about the substitution principle - Greenpeace has released
a report which details why it is crucial that the EU legislation is
strengthened to include this - 'Safer Chemicals within Reach - Using
the Substitution Principle to drive Green Chemistry'.
Secretary of State backs
Baku-Ceyhan pipeline
Environmental and human rights groups have responded with dismay to
the recent decision by Hilary Benn, the new Secretary of State for International
Development, to back a $250 million World Bank loan for BP’s hugely
controversial Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline.
The Bank’s loan follows intense lobbying by BP, which is leading
the consortium to build the BTC project. While the Bank touts the project
as a “milestone” which “breaks new ground on local economic
benefit”, furious campaigners say it is primarily driven by the
US desire for secure oil supplies, and could lead to severe economic
hardship for thousands of people and the destabilisation of the entire
Caspian region. In the days running up to the decision, executive directors
of the Bank acknowledged the severe problems with BTC but frequently
observed that the “political nature” of the project meant
that there was little they could do to stop it.
Anders Lustgarten of the Baku-Ceyhan Campaign, a coalition of groups
which has been publicly critical of the project, commented: “It
gives the powers of government to corporate entities; it uses taxpayer
funds to subsidise another US energy grab that will make climate change
even worse; and it fails local people in every way from paltry compensation
to increased exposure to security forces and major accidents.”
More information is available from the Kurdish
Human Rights Project
Supporters can write to Hilary Benn at: 1 Palace Street, London SW1E
5HE or H-Benn@dfid.gov.uk
Fairtrade Pineapples
make their Mark
Somerfield and Waitrose are now stocking Fairtrade pineapples. They
join the Co-op, which decided in 2002 that all of its pineapples would
be Fairtrade. The pineapples are from the Asoproagroín association
of farmers in Costa Rica and are available all year round. The fruit
is being imported by AgroFair UK, a Fairtrade fruit company owned by
the farmers themselves.
Students drive Esso off campus
Following a two-year campaign by student network People & Planet,
Esso (ExxonMobil) has cancelled its annual recruitment tour of UK universities.
According to a source inside a leading university careers service, “This
year, although they did initially book presentations, ExxonMobil have
decided not to tour university campuses at all.” Esso is also understood
to have decided against attending any university careers fairs. Lucy
Pearce added: “The more people who refuse to work for Esso, the
sooner the oil giant will have to admit to the reality of climate change
and stop blocking action to control it.”
For more information on the student campaign to Stop Esso, visit www.peopleandplanet.org/stopesso/
and click on Campaign News. Or see http://www.stopesso.com
Co-op declares Fairtrade war
The Co-op supermarket challenged the big coffee brands to pay small
coffee growers a fair price when it announced in November that it would
switch all its own-brand instant and ground coffee to Fairtrade. It
is calling on the big multinational ‘roasters’, whose brands
include Nescafé and Maxwell House, to “overcome their fears”
and launch their own Fairtrade coffee.
Overnight, the Co-op’s conversion to 100 percent Fairtrade will
boost the value of the UK Fairtrade coffee market by 15 percent or £4
million, returning a total of £¾ million to growers.
Under Fairtrade, coffee growers get a fair price, currently double or
triple the global market price. Under conventional agreements, and at
current market prices, they get just over half what it actually costs
to grow the beans, meaning they are subsidising richer nations’
coffee drinking.
The Co-op is encouraging customers - in-store and through a dedicated
‘Roast your Roaster’ section on its website (see below) -
to demand that the manufacturers of their favourite brands launch at
least one Fairtrade line.
According to the Co-op, the roasters’ reluctance to introduce Fairtrade
lines is down to fear of the financial impact of paying more for their
beans, of loss of control in their relationships with suppliers and
of the impact on their reputation and brands.
The Co-op estimates that if the big three roasters (Nestlé, Kraft
- Maxwell House and Sara Lee - Douwe Egberts) supplying the UK paid
a Fairtrade price for their brands, growers would be at least £50
million a year better off.
More info from www.co-op.co.uk/fairtrade
Food for Life
A new report published by the Soil Association claims that the Government
is failing to ensure that children at primary schools are given healthy
food in line with its own nutritional standards.
The daily amount spent on each child’s school lunch can be as low
as 31 pence per day, compared with around 60p spent on a prisoner’s
lunch. As a result, low-quality processed food dominates school meals,
which is often high in fat, sugar and salt.
An action pack has been produced providing practical steps to governors,
teachers and parents to help them improve the quality of their children’s
school meals. It gives guidelines on how they can help bring about change
so meals served are 30 percent organic, 50 percent locally-sourced and
75 percent from unprocessed ingredients.
The Soil Association has written to 50 major food companies that supply
food to schools, asking them to agree to a code of conduct, stipulating,
for example, that potentially harmful food additives are not included
in food destined for schools.
The report, action pack and educational material are available free
of charge online at www.soilassociation.org
and www.foodforlifeuk.org.
A copy of the Food for Life report costs £12 and the action pack
costs £5. A 50% discount is available to members of the Soil Association.
Copies can be ordered from the Soil Association on 0117 929 0661 or
email sass@soilassociation.org
Fancy another Seedy Sunday in Brighton?
The community seed swap, Seedy Sunday, is happening again, on February
1st at the Old Market, 11a Upper Market St., Hove, East Sussex.
2003’s event attracted 800 people and brought together gardeners,
seed savers or those just wanting to learn more about saving their own
vegetable and flower seed. There will be speakers, displays, seed potatoes,
organic cafe and stalls by community allotment groups and heritage seed
companies, as well as the seed swap itself.
Contact: seedysundaybrighton@yahoo.co.uk
or call Fran Saunders on 01273 381686.
Re-Form furniture
Chairs and tables made from 100% recycled materials are now available
from Re-Form. The timber frames are made from reused softwood and the
seats and table tops are made from recycled plastic bottles. There are
four table styles, a chair and a stool, which all come flat packed.
Prices range from £105 to £500.
See their website or
ring 01933 391480 for a brochure.
Junk mail filter
Environment group Planet Ark has joined with the UK direct marketing
industry to reduce the amount of “junk” mail that Britons
receive every year. For people who don’t want to receive advertising
mail, this unique alliance is promoting the ‘Mailing Preference
Service.’ This is a free industry service that allows people to
stop receiving unwanted mail.
People can register their name and address free of charge on the Mailing
Preference Service by going to www.mpsonline.org.uk. For the cost of
a local call, people can also phone 0845 7034599.
Britons receive nearly four billion pieces of direct mail every year.
About 78,000 tonnes of “junk” mail ends up in UK landfills
every year. Only 13% of direct mail is currently recycled, but the industry
and Planet Ark are hoping to increase this to 30% by 2005.
For more information visit their website
or phone 020 7738 1991.
Chuck snacks off the checkout!
Do you find yourself having to say “No!” to your children
nagging for sweets or chocolate displayed at the checkout? The Food
Commission is launching a new campaign called Chuck Snacks off the Checkout!
following lots of complaints from its Parents Jury members.
More information appears in the supermarkets report in this issue. To
find out more, visit the Parents
Jury website or write to:
The Food Commission (CSOC), FREEPOST 7564, London N1 9BR,
fax: 020 7837 1141 or ring
tel : 020 7837 2250.
