It’s been another busy year for Greenpeace Birmingham & Black Country so here’s some of our highlights.
During the summer we started a campaign against toy manufactures who use packaging that comes from Indonesian rain forests, the focus was on the big three, Mattel, Hasbro and Disney with a particular emphasis on Barbie. We started the campaign with a Barbie hunt; we hid 11 Barbie dolls (with chainsaws) around Birmingham and the Black Country and put clues of the locations online. Once found there were further instructions to carry out. The pressure on the three companies was then increased after stickers started appearing on their toy packaging warning people where the packaging came from. This was another successful campaign for Greenpeace after the toy manufactures agreed to source their packaging from sustainable sources
The other big campaign of the summer was the oceans campaign, targeting John West who used destructive fishing practices, catching sharks and turtles, and possibly even dolphins in its nets. Like the toy packaging campaign, stickers started appearing on their tins warning people of fishing methods used. This was another success for Greenpeace as John West agreed to use more sustainable fishing methods.
Towards the end of summer we started the second part of the oceans campaign which focused on putting pressure on the Government to support changes to the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) which was being reviewed in the European Parliament. This campaign was supported by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall whose TV series “The Big Fish Fight” highlighted many of the campaigns issues.
The end of summer is also festival season for us with volunteering at Glastonbury and the Mostly Jazz festival in Moseley. We also had a lot of success at the Moseley Folk festival (definatly one of my highlights this year) getting a lot of people to sign up to the CFP campaign.
We began Autumn with a new campaign by taking part in a day of action against Volkswagen in which over 50 other Greenpeace groups around Europe simultaneously occupied Volkswagen dealerships and forecourts. We demanded that Volkswagen (who like to present themselves as having a nice green eco friendly image) stop lobbying and opposing EU climate change and emissions laws.
During this time there were two big events; Greenpeace celebrated its 40th birthday and the Rainbow Warrior III replaced the Rainbow Warrior II as Greenpeace’s flagship.
We ended the year by attending Kick Off at Villa park put on by Envision, an event for young people aged 16-19 to take action on issues they are passionate about within their communities. It was a great opportunity for us to engage with some politically aware young people and explain a bit about what Greenpeace is about and what we were currently campaigning about.
Lets hope 2012 is just as busy and exciting.
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