Woolies customers demand they seize the light

Posted by jamie — 19 September 2007 at 8:27am - Comments

Woolies customers signed our flags asking the company to remove incandescent bulbs from their shelves

Remember those flags we hung outside Woolworths' head office last week? We have more of those. A lot more. Over 100 of them, each carrying dozens of signatures from Woolies customers eager to see the company selling only energy efficient bulbs. This morning, all those thousands of signatures are being delivered directly to the Woolworths board of directors at their meeting being held at head office, but of course we're doing it with a bit of style.

A team of Greenpeace Light Brigade volunteers will be handing the flags over to the board when they arrive. After our day of action in July, Woolworths CEO Trevor Bish-Jones asked for all our communications to be directed not at staff in the stores, but to head office and to honour his request, that's exactly what we're doing. And while they wait for the board to arrive, the volunteers are handing out efficient compact fluorescent bulbs (CFLs) to staff who will pass through a colonnade of flags erected at the entrance. We want to create a buzz in the rest of the office which will hopefully create some internal pressure to match the external pressure the board is feeling.

But we have received some further information from Mr Bish-Jones about their policy on light bulbs. Last week, we sent some of the flags along with a CFL bulb and some information on the benefits of promoting energy efficiency to the board members, which prompted him to write to us. He notes that the company has committed to phasing out incandescents by 2012 or, at least, "cease replacing stock". There's a subtle difference, because rather than stop selling these bulbs by that date, they'll just not buy any more. So beyond 2012 you might still be able to find them in Woolies until those stocks run out, which will delay the extinction of the incandescent bulb even further.

It's a start, but it's not something they've been shouting about - as I write, there's certainly nothing in their press releases. It's also not enough to update our light bulb retailers league table, as they haven't yet reduced the price of their CFLs. When two of these everyday essentials cost more than a bottle of their much-publicised champagne, you have to think there's something wrong with their priorities.

We have the evidence that for thousands of their customers, it's too little, too slowly. Hopefully we'll be able to report later on some speedier progress, but don't wait until then - you can email Trevor now and tell him to seize the light.


Thanks for the Digg. We must get a StumbleUpon button on our stories too, as we get a substantial amount of our traffic through that site as well. But if you want to tag our stuff there, you don't have to wait for us to get our act together!

web editor
gpuk

Thanks for the Digg. We must get a StumbleUpon button on our stories too, as we get a substantial amount of our traffic through that site as well. But if you want to tag our stuff there, you don't have to wait for us to get our act together! web editor gpuk

About Jamie

I'm a forests campaigner working mainly on Indonesia. My personal mumblings can be found @shrinkydinky.

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