Report on Disney and
Asda suppliers use of sweated labour
Ethical clothing in a shop near you
BUAV launch the Humane Household Products Standard
Jubilee Debt Campaign
Garden centres fail to reduce peat usage
Viva campaign against M&S factory-farmed duckmeat
Lifeswitch
Plastic bottle recycling
Sunny Delight sold by Procter & Gamble
See also the News Archive pages for stories from past issues of the mag
Same old story - Disney in Bangladesh
American workers’ rights group the National Labor Committee released a new report in March about the Niagra factory in Bangladesh, which produces clothes for Disney and ASDA. Twenty-two union members at the factory who demanded their legal overtime pay were allegedly beaten, fired, and imprisoned on false charges. The factory apparently requires 19-hour shifts, pays no overtime and denies maternity leave and benefits.
The NLC report stated that “The Disney Niagra workers are not asking for a boycott. In fact, the worst thing Disney and the other companies could do would be to pull their work from the factory.” It wants Disney to keep its production in the factory while at the same time working with their contractor to clean up the Niagra plant and to guarantee that the basic legal rights of the workers are finally respected.
If the Disney Company has any commitment to human rights — as Disney’s Code of Conduct clearly claims it does — then the workers are asking Disney to act on that commitment. In fact, no worker spoken to by the NLC had ever heard of Disney’s Code of Conduct, let alone seen it.
According to the NLC, monitoring inspections of the factories are known in advance, and the factory is cleaned with the help of the workers. It says that sometimes the monitors speak with the workers, but it is always inside the plant, if not actually in the manager’s office, then within hearing range of supervisors on the shop floor. Every worker explains that if they ever dared speak the truth in the factory, they would be fired the minute the so-called monitors left the plant.
Go to: http://www.disneysweatshops.org to download the report and automatically send a fax to Disney CEO Michael Eisner.
Alternatively, you can write to him at: Mr Michael Eisner, Chief Executive Officer, Walt Disney Company, 500 South Buena Vista Street, Burbank, CA91521, USA
Organic Clothing on the High Street
One of the most frequent questions Ethical Consumer gets asked by its readers concerns the availability of Fairtrade and organic clothing. While organic and Fairtrade food sales have exploded in the last few years, the clothing sector limps far behind, with much catching up to do. Gossypium sells organic and fairly traded clothes by mail order, over the internet and from its store in Sussex. This summer, Marks & Spencer will start stocking the Gossypium Yoga Collection. Hopefully it’s just the start of widely available ethical clothing and other shops will follow suit.
Contact Gossypium on 01273 488221 or have a look at its website: www.gossypium.co.uk
Take the cruelty out of cleaning
Following on from the success of its Humane Cosmetics Standard, BUAV's Humane Household Products Standard was launched in response to public demand for reliable guidance on genuinely ‘not tested on animals’ household cleaning products. So far, approved household products manufacturers are Faith Products, Clear Spring, Co-op own-label and soon-to-be launched The Laundry brand.
Many household products, such as air freshener, washing-up liquid and bleach, are also tested on animals. Hamsters, guinea-pigs, rabbits, fish and dogs have all been subjected to cruel, and BUAV claims, unscientific tests. Companies responsible include Colgate-Palmolive, SC Johnson, Unilever and Procter & Gamble.
Visit the BUAV website to find out the dirt on household product companies that still profit from lab animal suffering, and join in by urging your MP to sign its Early Day Motion for a total UK ban on household products testing on animals.
Meanwhile the group has also produced a Little Book of Cruelty Free listing approved companies under its Humane Cosmetics Standard. The information is also available online at www.buav.org/gocrueltyfree
More information from BUAV: tel: 020 7700 4888 or email info@buav.org
Call for Change
Every day sub-Saharan Africa spends almost £16 million on debt repayments, more than it gets in aid. Half of the region’s population live in extreme poverty, and despite their promises, the leaders of the world’s richest countries have taken very little action on debt.
The Jubilee Debt Campaign (JDC) has calculated that it would cost just £1.3billion to write off the UK’s share of debts owed by the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) to the World Bank and IMF. But the latest data suggests that the debts owed are only set to be reduced by one third; far short of the full cancellation they both deserve and need to meet basic poverty-reduction targets. £1.3 billion is the equivalent of just £3 per person per year, over the 10-year countdown to meeting the 2015 Millennium Development Goals (such as halving global extreme poverty).
The JDC’s Call for Change campaign is asking UK people to set an example to the rest of the world by meeting our share of the cost of cancelling this remaining debt. Action cards to send to Gordon Brown can be ordered by emailing info@jubileedebtcampaign.org.uk or telephoning 020 7324 4722. You can also sign up for action alerts and find out about your local Jubilee Debt Campaign.
For peat's sake
Garden centres have finished bottom of a league table detailing the efforts of retailers to phase out peat, a national survey compiled with the support of RSPB and Friends of the Earth has found.
Top of the table are DIY stores, with B&Q in pole position as the only outlet making significant progress towards reducing peat products, such as compost, and providing peat-free alternatives often made from recycled materials. Supermarkets ASDA and Safeway are just off the bottom, having failed to significantly reduce use of peat-based products for growing lettuce and other edible crops, and pot plants. Marks & Spencer headed the supermarkets, which filled the table’s middle ground.
Dr Olly Watts, Environmental Policy Officer at the RSPB, said: “specialist garden centres are ignoring one of the biggest issues in their own backyard. Peatlands are amongst the most important wildlife sites in Europe and by continuing to buy peat-based products, gardeners are putting rare wildlife at risk and sentencing these areas to a slow and lingering death.”
As the gardening season gets into full swing, The Wildlife Trust has just re-launched its popular leaflet; ‘Where to buy peat-free products 2004.’ As the name suggests, it provides information on the range of peat-free products available from big DIY chains and some supermarkets and includes details of those stores with the most responsible attitudes towards peat use.
Members of the public can obtain a copy of The Wildlife Trusts’ ‘Where to buy peat-free’ leaflet by sending an A5 SAE to The Wildlife Trusts UK office, The Klin, Waterside, Mather Rd, Newark NG24 1WT. Alternatively it can be downloaded in PDF format from www.wildlifetrusts.org, which also contains more information about the Trusts’ peat-free campaign and its important habitats and species work.
Marks & Sparks - no marks
Marks & Spencer is the focus of a new Viva! campaign over its stocking of factory farmed duck meat. Viva! campaigners secretly filmed inside an M&S duck meat supplier and were horrified by the conditions that they found there.
Twenty million ducks are killed for meat each year in the UK, and Viva! is encouraging consumers to put pressure on Marks & Spencer, requesting that it stops selling factory-farmed ducks. The Marks & Spencer customer services number is 0845 302 1234.
For more information, contact Viva! on 0117 944 1000 or at 8 York Court, Wilder Street, Bristol BS2 8QH, www.viva.org.uk or request its 'Ducks out of Water' pack.
Transform your life
Christian Aid is offering you the chance to start again and find out what your life could have been like if you'd been born somewhere else in the world. You can transform your life within seconds with www.lifeswitch.org, a new website, which was launched in time for Christian Aid Week which ran from 9-15 May 2004. LifeSwitch will enable you to swap your life with someone else’s in a different country. A new life could be just five simple steps away:
1. Choose a dream country for your new life
2. Submit your details and check out a few testimonials, and the company disclaimer if you are still not quite sure whether to proceed to actually morphing yourself
3. Keep your fingers crossed during the transformation process - your profile will be matched with someone else’s in the country you have chosen
4. Celebrate the new beginning of your life, or seek help if you are not happy with the outcome.
Online advice for plastic bottle recycling
www.plasticsrecycling.info is a brand new consumer-focussed website bringing you information and advice on plastic bottle recycling. The website is provided by Recoup, a non-profit making organisation with charitable status (www.recoup.org).
There are details of your local collection facilities and even advice for those who don’t have a recycling scheme that accepts plastic bottles in their area.
Did you know...?
• you can make an adult-sized fleece jacket from 25 fizzy pop bottles
• recycling a single plastic bottles saves enough energy to power a 60W light bulb for six hours
• 486 million plastic bottles were recycled in 2003
Sunny Delight dumped
Procter & Gamble has sold its controversial soft drink, Sunny Delight. One 500ml bottle contains more than the average daily recommended maximum intake of sugar, lots of chemical additives, vegetable oil and only 5% fruit juice. The brand was at the centre of Uncaged’s Boycott Procter & Gamble campaign for the company’s use of animal testing.
It was the most successful brand launched in the 1990s but sales of the drink soon plummetted and the brand became known as a marketing con. P&G insisted that Sunny Delight was stored in chiller cabinets alongside fruit juices to make it appear like a fresh product.
The brand has been bought by US investment firm JW Childs which bought the controversial Nutrasweet company from Monsanto in 2000.
