EC77, June/July 2002 - including Viva campaign against kangaroo-skin football boots, ovine commuters, Juice takeover, the Clean Investment campaign.
EC76, April/May 2002 - including peat campaign focus on Scotts, Bhopal action, April Fools report into rainforest destruction, poisonous plastics, the first patented chip, illegal imports of tropical wood.
Telling Disney to Do the Right Thing
For the last eight years, young women at the Shah Makdhum factory in
Bangladesh have been forced to work over 15 hours a day, 7 days a week,
denied maternity benefits, and paid just 5 cents for every $17.99 Disney
Winnie the Pooh shirt they sewed.
When the women stood up for their rights and denounced the violations,
Disney responded by cutting and running, pulling its work from the factory
and dumping the women on the street with nothing, penniless, facing
hunger and misery.
In the USA, the National Labor Committee has launched a campaign to
get Disney to do the right thing. In the UK, War on Want has joined
the campaign.
They want Disney to stay in Bangladesh and work with its contractor
to clean up the factory and guarantee that the human rights of these
women will be respected.
Michael Eisner, CEO of Disney, pays himself $133 million a year, or
about $63,000 an hour. It would take a worker in Bangladesh sewing Disney
garments for 12 cents an hour 210 years to earn what Eisner does in
an hour.
To support the campaign you could :
· Send a letter to Disney CEO Michael Eisner.
· Organise a high-visibility event at a Disney venue near you.
· Distribute leaflets in front of your local Disney store or
movie.
· Draw attention to the situation by discussing it with Disney
employees and shoppers.
Find out more at http://www.nlcnet.org/bangladesh/index.html
or http://www.waronwant.org
Greenpeace responds
On last issue’s news pages, we reported that the company which
owns Juice green electricity, Innogy, had just been bought by a German
company involved in nuclear power, RWE. Greenpeace has responded to
the article as follows:
"Juice is absolutely not going nuclear
Juice is a 100% clean, safe, renewable energy supply. Initially this
comes from water and wind power on land. Eventually it will come from
offshore wind if our campaign to build North Hoyle Wind farm is successful.
It was disheartening to see the way in which developments between Innogy
and RWE were presented as impacting on Juice.
Greenpeace has campaigned for the permanent closure of the nuclear industry
for 25 years and is currently battling hard to stop the UK government
building new nuclear power stations. Juice is an important part of that
campaign. Juice customers act as campaigners for renewables. No other
electricity company mobilizes their customers to write to MPs is support
of renewable energy. Their impact is significant.
The RWE takeover doesn’t change Juice or the way Innogy/Npower
generates power in any way. RWE do have nuclear power stations in Germany,
which they are committed to closing as part of a national phase out
of all nuclear power stations. The electricity from their German power
stations is not exported to the UK national grid.
Greenpeace is not endorsing the company, just the product Juice. We
chose to work with Innogy/Npower on Juice not because we think it is
a green company but because it is willing to work with us to create
a network of consumers committed to championing offshore wind. The company
is not part of the lobby for nuclear power in the UK and is actively
supporting the expansion of renewable energy in the Government's review
of energy policy. Innogy has assured us that this won’t change
with the RWE takeover.
Greenpeace believes that ethical consumption can only be useful to our
campaigns if it allows green products and services to become mainstream.
This can mean having to work with big companies where we may not agree
on everything they do. This approach has achieved a lot for the environment
in the past, and we are confident that it can do so again for renewable
energy."
Feel like chicken tonight?
Chicken
rearing is the most intensive and mechanised type of livestock production.
Every year over 800 million chickens are killed in the UK for their
meat. They are crammed into foul-smelling, windowless sheds and kept
together in huge numbers. One shed usually contains 30-40,000 birds,
with each bird allowed an area no bigger than a sheet of A4. Infected
poultry are the main source for both Salmonella and Campylobacter.
Antibiotics are routinely added to chicken feed. The chickens are already
crippled when they are slaughtered at 6 weeks of age – chicks in
an obese adult body.
Undercover footage was taken inside the factory farm of chicken company
Grampian Country Foods. This company produces nearly a third of all
UK-reared chickens and supplies Asda, Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Marks
& Spencer.
For more info and a sample letter to send to your local newspaper, contact
Viva! on 01273 777688 or write to 12 Queen Square, Brighton BN1 3FD.
Website: http://www.viva.org.uk
Eating Oil
Food transportation is energy inefficient - more energy is put into
our food than we get out of the food itself. In domestic terms, the
fuel used to fly a bottle of wine from New Zealand is equal to boiling
a kettle 268 times. Every 500g punnet of strawberries flown from the
USA uses the same energy as leaving a 100-watt light bulb burning for
four days. So says the 'Eating Oil' report from Sustain. The message
is to eat seasonal foods which are produced locally.
Organic food uses less energy in production than non-organic food. Non-organic
milk, for example, needs five times more energy per cow than organic
milk. But because 75% of organic food is imported we cancel out this
key environmental benefit. A shopping basket of 26 imported organic
products could have travelled 241,000 kilometres and released as much
CO2 as an average four bedroom household does through cooking meals
over eight months.
One way to reduce organic food miles is to increase UK production. Sustain
is running the Organic Targets Campaign which aims to encourage the
government to adopt a plan to make 30% of agricultural land organic
by 2010.
The report’s author, Andy Jones says, “We need to invest now
in regional and local food systems combined with fair trade initiatives
that will bring about a more secure, sustainable and fair food system.”
Greenhouse gas emissions associated with international transport are
not subject to the Kyoto Protocol and are largely unregulated. “The
CO2 from trade should be allocated to importing countries or at least
split between importing and exporting,” said Andy Jones.
The first international conference on localising food supplies takes
place on September 23rd at Warwick University. For more information
contact http://www.localfood.org.uk
The full report, Eating Oil, is available from Sustain for £30
(£12 to individuals and non-profit organisations). Contact them
on 020 7837 1228 or check out http://www.sustainweb.org
McDonald’s ‘social responsibility’ report
In April McDonald’s published its new 45-page social responsibility
report covering its relationships with employees, suppliers and the
environment.
Maybe McD’s is worried about the impending bad publicity that will
arise when it has to payout approximately $10 million to vegetarian
charities after three Seattle vegetarians sued the company. McDonald’s
had previously claimed that its fries were cooked only in vegetable
oil when in fact they were coated in beef tallow. McDonald’s claim
that as a symbol of globalisation “we’re probably the absolute
wrong target. We are, in fact, an amalgamation of small, locally-owned
businesses.” Yes. And intensively-farmed pigs might fly.
http://www.mcspotlight.org
Toxic cocktails
A cocktail of pesticides above legal and safety limits has been found
in a range of fruit and vegetables on sale in the UK, according to Friends
of the Earth.
The following (non-organic) foods were found with illegal levels of
pesticides: UK-grown strawberries, grapes, starfruit, nectarines, peaches,
potatoes, UK celery, grapefruits, lemons, mushrooms and tomatoes.
The residues found on UK-grown strawberries and celery were from pesticides
not approved for use in the UK. Lindane, a pesticide banned in the EU,
was found in mushrooms, whilst one sample of tomatoes from Spain contained
residues of six different pesticides.
The information comes from the government’s latest survey of pesticide
residues. The results were published in June by the Pesticides Residues
Committee at http://www.pesticides.gov.uk
Green Electricity League Table
Friends of the Earth has just published a league table which tells householders
which electricity suppliers provide the best green electricity products.
Top of the table is Unit[e], also a Best Buy when Ethical Consumer looked
at electricity suppliers in EC70. Second best was Ecotricity, another
independent company which was not around when we did our report.
New obligations in force from April require electricity companies to
get 3% of their supplies from renewable sources, with a target of 10%
by 2010. The key question for FOE is whether the companies are only
using the renewable energy tariff to satisfy their legal requirement,
which is undesirable. There are also two types of green tariffs:
Energy – promises to buy renewable electricity to match some of
your usage
Fund – puts money aside to fund environmental projects.
Friends of the Earth recommend that you buy energy-based tariffs.
Both Unit[e] and Ecotricity are energy tariffs and only deal in green
energy. Unit[e] gets 35% of its electricity from hydro and 65% from
wind. 100% of Ecotricity’s electricity comes from wind.
Check out the league table on the web at http://www.foe.co.uk
at the Climate Campaigns section. Contact FOE on 020 7490 1555 or at
26-28 Underwood Street, London N1 7JQ
EC 77 June/July 2002
Sheep take the Tube
150 sheep crammed themselves into a London underground carriage in March
to protest at the suffering of sheep exported live from Britain to be
slaughtered in Europe. The protest rallied outside the National Farmers
Union headquarters.
The sheep were in fact Compassion in World Farming supporters and the
action marked the culmination of a weekend of protest including a large
demonstration in Dover.
A recent opinion poll revealed that 78% of the general public want to
see an end to the live export trade. CIWF want animals destined for
slaughter to be sent to UK abattoirs and then the meat exported.
For more information and to get a copy of a petition to sign, contact
CIWF at 5a Charles Street, Petersfield, Hampshire GU32 3EH Tel: 01730
264208 http://www.ciwf.co.uk
Juice goes nuclear
The company that owns Juice, a wind and water renewable energy company
developed by npower in association with Greenpeace, was bought by a
huge German company with nuclear power interests at the end of March.
The German company, RWE, already owns Thames Water and will now own
Innogy (including npower and Juice, Yorkshire Electricity and Northern
Electric).
RWE’s nuclear arm RWE NUKEM is involved in the supply, transport
and storage of uranium; decommissioning; radioactive waste management
(i.e. treatment, storage and transportation). In 1988, NUKEM shipped
mislabelled weapons grade uranium to Pakistan in violation of the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty. RWE Power is responsible for the operation
of bituminous coal-fired, gas-fired and nuclear power stations. Thames
Water has been prosecuted numerous times for water pollution incidents
and topped an Environment Agency table of the most prosecuted water
companies of 2000.
We asked Greenpeace what effect the move would have on them and they
replied: “As far as Greenpeace is concerned, nothing has changed.
Juice customers can still be confident that they are making a positive
contribution to the development of offshore wind. There are many aspects
of Innogy’s business with which we take issue, and they disagree
with us on many things, but we’ve found common ground with Juice.
The takeover won’t change any of that.”
Here at Ethical Consumer, however, the takeover will change things.
We have decided not to accept further advertising from Juice.
Kick cruelty out of football
Viva! kicked off its campaign against kangaroo skin football boots outside
Premiership and First Division football clubs in March and April. Seven
million kangaroos are slaughtered every year in Australia, mostly for
their skins. Most kangaroo skins are exported to Europe and the USA
to make football boots. Baby roos are killed or left to die – unwanted
by-products of what Viva! calls ‘the world’s biggest wildlife
massacre.’
A recent Viva! campaign virtually ended the sale of kangaroo meat in
Britain, but now the group is calling on British football players and
consumers to boycott kangaroo leather boots. Supporters are urged to
write to Adidas, which uses kangaroo skin. Viva! has already written
to David Beckham and team-mate Fabian Barthez who both wear Adidas Predator,
as well as Michael Owen and Robert Pires who wear Umbro’s XA1,
which is also made from kangaroo leather.
Contact Viva! for a free kangaroo action pack on 01272 777688 or write
to 12 Queen Square, Brighton BN1 3FD.
Check out the website at http://www.savethekangaroo.com
Clean Investment Campaign 2002
Launched over a decade ago, the Clean Investment Campaign is one of
the Campaign Against Arms Trade’s most successful campaigns.
The Clean Investment Campaign challenges selected organisations that,
perhaps unwittingly, give support to the arms trade. It aims to erode
this support by lobbying shareholding organisations to persuade them
to disinvest. Every year, CAAT publish lists of selected organisations
and their shareholdings in major arms exporting companies. Shareholders
fit into six categories: Charities, Educational Institutions (primarily
universities), Health organisations, Religious organisations, Pension
funds (including those of local authorities), and Trade Unions.
There are two ways that supporters can help:
Lobbying the Organisations
Lobby any of the identified organisations with which you have links
- a charity you support, a church you belong to, a university you study
or teach at and/or your local authority. CAAT would very much like to
be kept informed of your progress.
Uncovering Shareholdings
CAAT need help to fill in the information gaps (the ‘no info’
entries in the tables), particularly regarding some local authorities
and many universities.
Take a look at the shareholdings on the CAAT website at http://www.caat.org.uk
For a printed copy, send a cheque for £5 to CAAT, 11 Goodwin Street,
London N4 3HQ. Tel: 020 7281 0297
The Co-op and battery eggs
Marks & Spencer no longer stocks battery eggs but the Co-op, a pioneering
company when it comes to ethical standards, still does. Battery cages
are not due to be banned in the EU for another 10 years, in 2012.
The Farm Animal Welfare Network (FAWN) is trying to put pressure on
the Co-op to stop selling battery eggs. They have produced a letter
for supporters to sign and send to the Co-op. The letter includes reasons
why FAWN believes that battery eggs are not only cruel but also illegal
according to farm animal protection law.
Contact FAWN for a copy of the letter at PO Box 40, Holmfirth HD9 3YY
Tel: 01484 688650
Factory Watch
The amount of cancer-causing chemicals being released by the biggest
factories in the UK has fallen by almost 40% in the last three years,
according to Friends of the Earth’s Factory Watch. But 9,000 tonnes
are still being released, with 70% of the pollution coming from just
10 factories.
Friends of the Earth launched its Factory Watch Campaign in 1998, calling
for an 80% cut in releases of cancer gases by 2005. The Factory Watch
website (www.foe.co.uk/factorywatch) enables people to check health-threatening
pollution from factories in their own area. The site was recently relaunched
and updated to include changes since 1998. It is based on the Environment
Agency’s Pollution Inventory, which details chemicals released
from factories.
More info from FOE at 26-28 Underwood Street, London N1 7JQ Tel: 020
7490 1555 http://www.foe.co.uk/factorywatch
Recycle-IT!
An Internet-ready computer for only £299 and, what’s more,
it’s made from recycled components. That’s what’s on
offer at Recycle-IT!, the Luton-based computer recycling business set
up in 1995 to divert reusable computers from companies to people and
communities that can’t afford new ones. In addition, they provide
work placements and jobs to the long-term unemployed. The company is
not-for-profit.
Contact them at Recycle-IT!
C/o SKF (UK) Ltd, Sundon Park Road, Luton LU3 3BL Tel: 01582 492436
http://www.recycle-it.ltd.uk
Get a job!
Yes that means you, recent graduates! Student organisation People &
Planet (formerly Third World First) has just set up an ethical careers
service. After over 30 years of working with universities, the organisation
saw a need for information to help students make ethically and socially
responsible choices about their futures. Individuals can subscribe to
this service for £9 per year which includes 3 issues of ‘Your
Future’ magazine, which contains advice on ethical career dilemmas
and profiles of people with ‘dream jobs’. Subscribers also
get access to the special area of the website with hundreds of links
to recruitment agencies, organisations and businesses. This includes
comprehensive listings of careers fairs, seminars and conferences organised
by think-tanks, trade associations and NGOs, and invitations to People
& Planet’s events and annual conference. Careers services and
other organisations can also subscribe at a group rate. See http://www.peopleandplanet.org/ethicalcareers/
or phone 01865 245678 for more information.
Don't bottle it up
It’s not always easy to find anywhere to recycle plastic bottles
but help is at hand. Log onto http://www.recycle-more.co.uk
to find out your nearest recycling facility for plastic as well as other
materials such as cars and components, liquids and chemicals, textiles,
waste electronics and construction and demolition waste.
New ethical shopping guide
Already helping us to compile our product reports, a new book called ‘Ethical
Shopping’ aims to name and ‘shame leading companies that do
not have a code of conduct for their overseas suppliers.’ The book
shows that 89 percent of all retailers with their own-brand products produced
in developing countries ;;do not have a code of conduct, are in the process
of developing one or have one but without independent assurance of implementation.
The Body Shop and internet banking firm Smile scored highly whilst Benetton,
Laura Ashley and Habitat fared poorly.
Ethical Shopping is written by academics William Young and Richard Welford
and published by Fusion Press priced £7.99. To order call 020 7928
5599 or email sales@visionpaperbacks.co.uk or visit http://www.visionpaperbacks.co.uk
Peat bogs saved
In what is being hailed as the biggest victory for nature conservation
for years, the Government is buying out a multinational company’s
right to mine three peat bogs. The victory will mark the end of a 12
year campaign and will virtually end commercial peat cutting in the
UK.
Scotts - a US garden product multinational – has been bagging the
peat bogs and selling them to gardeners as ‘Miracle-Gro’ compost.
The saved peat bogs are at Thorne Moor in Yorkshire and Wedholme Flow
in Cumbria and are rare examples of English raised bogs. Scotts will
be given two years to exploit half of another peat bog at Hatfield Moor
in Yorkshire.
Peat bogs are seen by some as the UK’s rainforests and they are
important for three main reasons -
Rare wildlife: Many rare species of plants and animals like the
Great Sundew - the UK’s largest carnivorous plant - are only found
in peat bogs.
Archaeology: Acidic conditions means that decay hardly takes
place. The result - a social and environmental record dating back 10,000
years.
Global cooling: Peat bogs remove CO2 from the atmosphere and
help fight climate change.
Last year Friends of the Earth specifically targeted Scotts and asked
gardeners to boycott its products. In February, protestors from the
newly-formed Peat Alert Campaign occupied or disrupted seven of Scotts’
office, factories or extraction sites in a National Day of Action. The
group plans an Easter Blockade of the Hatfield Moor site from 25th March
to 28th March.
The move is a victory for the environment but not for corporate responsibility.
£17 million was needed to make Scotts stop mining the moors. Will
the Government now need to pay Sinclairs to stop peat cutting? A dangerous
precedent has now been set whereby companies can expect to be paid to
stop costing us the earth.
The deal will focus attention on rival peat company, Sinclairs, which
is still extracting peat at Bolton Fell in Cumbria. Sinclairs sells
peat under the J Arthur Bower’s brand name. FOE is now campaigning
to get retailers to phase-out peat. Whilst Homebase, Focus and Wyevale
Country Gardens have followed B&Q's lead, Tesco, Sainsbury, Safeway
and ASDA have not yet agreed to phase out peat products.
For more information about the Easter Blockade, contact Peat Alert on
0113 262 9365 or c/o crc, 16 Sholebroke Avenue, Leeds LS7 3HB Email:
info@peatalert.org.uk, Web: http://www.peatalert.org.uk
ActionAid patents chip
In
an audacious move, ActionAid has filed a spoof patent for ready-salted
chips to highlight the injustice of global patenting rules. If allowed,
it would mean chippies nationwide having to pay a fee if they want to
serve Britain’s favourite takeaway food with added salt.
Salil Shetty, ActionAid’s Chief Executive said: “Our chip
patent shows how absurd these patent rules are and highlights the ease
with which big business is using these rules to deprive people of their
rights. Charging chippies for adding salt to their chips is just the
thin end of the wedge.
Already big business has taken out almost a thousand patents on the
major crops we depend on for our food supply, including rice, wheat,
maize and soya. Farmers in poor countries are faced with the prospect
of having to pay for the right to grow food that they have been growing
for generations or risk infringement of the patent. This is an outrage.
Global rules on patenting are currently being reviewed. Tony Blair must
seize this opportunity to withdraw his support for food patenting which
is threatening the rights of millions world-wide.”
For more information, contact ActionAid, Hamlyn House, Macdonald Road,
London N19 5PG Tel: 020 7561 7561 Website: http://www.actionaid.org
Save or delete?
The UK is currently the top importer within the EU of illegal wood from
tropical forests, such as plywood from the Indonesian and Amazon rainforests.
But 87% of the British public want the government to ban illegal imports
of wood according to a MORI poll on behalf of Greenpeace.
The poll is being released as Greenpeace launch Save or Delete, a new
campaign to protect the world’s remaining ancient forests. 80%
of the world’s original ancient forest has already disappeared
forever and today we are still losing an area the size of a football
pitch every two seconds.
In April, world governments will meet in the Hague for an Ancient Forests
Summit. Greenpeace is calling on governments to:
- stop the import of illegal and destructively logged timber
- create a global ancient forest fund to pay for forest protection
In December, the Brazilian government took the unprecedented step of banning all mahogany logging that is not certified. Greenpeace wants the UK government to support the ban by seizing all uncertified Brazilian mahogany destined for the UK and at retailers. Supporters are asked to write to Tony Blair urging him to do this.
More info from Greenpeace on 020 7865 8180 or http://www.greenpeace.org
Pyramid of plastics
As part of its PVC Free campaign, Greenpeace has developed a pyramid
of plastics for those wanting to replace PVC with another, less environmentally-damaging
plastic.
The pyramid ranks plastics according to their hazardous characteristics,
PVC being at the top and biobased plastics, the least polluting, at
the bottom. Check out the Greenpeace
website for details of the toxicity of individual plastics.
1. polyvinylchloride (PVC)
2. polyurethane (PU), polystyrene (PS), acrylonitrile-butadienestyrene
(ABS), polycarbonate (PC)
3. polyethylene-teraphthalate (PET)
4. polyethylene (PE), polypropylene (PP)
5. bio-based polymers
UK firms sponsor rainforest destruction
APRIL Fools is the title of a new Friends of the Earth report into APRIL,
one of the world’s most destructive paper companies. The fifty-page
document links UK companies to the destruction of prime Indonesian rainforest.
APRIL has already cleared at least 220,000 hectares of Indonesian rainforest,
(an area almost twice the size of Greater London), with the support
of British companies.
The likes of AMEC (which built the pulp mill), ING Barings (loan arrangers)
and nine British paper merchants (which buy the stock under the brand
name of PaperOne) are all implicated. APRIL has already had its share
of confrontations with the local indigenous people who inhabit this
ecologically bountiful region.
This report marks the launch of Friends of the Earth’s new Corporates
Campaign. FOE is calling for global rules for business to make companies
accountable for the environmental and social impacts of their operations.
(See also Solution Striven in this issue.)
To obtain a copy of APRIL Fools, which details all the allegations concerning
APRIL and profiles the other corporations involved, see www.foe.co.uk/campaigns/corporates/case_studies/april/
or phone Friends of the Earth on 020 7490 1555.
Meanwhile, Barclays Bank holds more than £8 million worth of shares,
and has been involved in £400million worth of loans to another
company destroying Indonesian rainforest, Asia Pulp & Paper (APP).
This company is also accused by Friends of the Earth of being one of
the most destructive paper companies in the world, responsible for desecrating
280,000 hectares of Indonesian rainforest habitat. The company is planning
to clear cut at least the same amount again over the next five years.
FOE is calling on Barclays to introduce a Forest Policy to ensure none
of its future investments damage forests or abuse the rights of local
communities. APP is one of the world’s biggest corporate debtors
and is currently in talks with creditors to reschedule these debts.
FOE campaigners say “Barclays can use these debt negotiations as
a real opportunity to put pressure on APP to prevent them from destroying
Indonesia’s precious forests.”
Toxic Bhopal Water
December
3rd 2001 marked the 17th anniversary of the Union Carbide disaster at
Bhopal, India. Around 7,500 died in the immediate wake of a gas leak
from the pesticide factory, but the current death toll is over 20,000,
with countless others still suffering from exposure to the gas. Groundwater,
which is used by 5,000 Bhopal families for their everyday needs, is
still contaminated.
To mark the anniversary, Greenpeace and Bhopal survivors’ organisations
collected groundwater in Bhopal and delivered bottles of it to Dow (the
new owners of Union Carbide) offices around the world.
The water bottles were labelled ‘Refreshingly Toxic Bhopal Water’.
Greenpeace is asking people to write to Dow asking it to clean up the
toxic mess in Bhopal. Activists also want medical rehabilitation and
compensation for the survivors, and for Union Carbide and its officials
to be held accountable.
More info from Greenpeace on 020 7865 8180 or http://www.greenpeace.org
