On a cold but dry Saturday afternoon a few volunteers from the Edinburgh group visited Waitrose in Stockbridge for a little bit of gentle protesting. Why Waitrose? Aren't they more socially and environmentally responsible than several other supermarkets? Well, perhaps in some ways, yes.
However, we're not happy that Waitrose have recently decided to team up with Arctic-exploiters Shell. Shell are one of the leaders in the race to carve up the fragile Arctic as they search for our planet's hardest-to-find oil. So I don't think that the two million people who have joined our Save the Arctic campaign would rate Shell as a suitable commercial partner for a company like Waitrose that wants to trade on its image as an environmentally responsible retailer.
And it seems Waitrose customers agree with us. On Saturday afternoon we spoke to several customers at their Comely Bank store. A lot of them were already familiar with our Save the Arctic campaign, and we had little difficulty persuading them to petition Waitrose to dump their partnership with Shell.
One key impression I got from my conversations was that Waitrose customers really do value the supermarket's image as a responsible retailer. So I'm pretty confident that we will succeed in persuading Waitrose to Dump Shell. And while this alone won't Save the Arctic, it will add yet more weight to the ever-louder message that we want this most fragile ecosystem off-limits to oil companies.
If you haven't already done so, please tell Waitrose to Dump Shell here!
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