Heard the news? Ken has dumped Barbie! He's discovered that his long time lover is destroying Indonesia's forests for those pretty pink boxes she likes to wrap herself in. You can't blame Ken. As you can see in the video, he's just seen the results of the latest Greenpeace investigation which shows how Barbie is threatening the future of endangered species and the stability of our climate. The paper used in Barbie boxes - like palm oil which we've campaigned about in the past - comes straight from the rainforests of Indonesia, home to rapidly vanishing creatures such as orang-utans, and Sumatran tigers and elephants.
Ok, maybe it isn't all Barbie's fault. Mattel, the company behind the malevolent mannequin, is the one responsible and our global investigation has uncovered the links between Mattel and our old friends, the notorious Asia Pulp and Paper (APP). Which is why activists dressed as Ken have scaled Mattel's headquarters in Los Angeles, while back in the UK we've helped spread the word about Ken's announcement with a guerrilla advertising campaign launched in Piccadilly Circus and with adverts on bus stops and tube lines.
By analysing the fibres in Barbie packaging and digging into the commercial links between various companies, we've been able to link the carbon-rich forests and peatlands of Indonesia with the packaging of toys on sale in shops around the world. The trail leads directly from Mattel to APP and its suppliers in a chain of destruction that spans the globe.
And it's not just Mattel; catch up with how Greenpeace has exposed Hasbro, Disney and Lego for also using paper fibre from Indonesia's rainforests with our interactive maps.
APP is part of the Sinar Mas group which seems to be undergoing a crisis just now. On the one hand, there's APP: still committed to rampant deforestation (its clumsy PR spin machine has even admitted that). On the other, there's the palm oil division Golden Agri Resources - just a few months ago, it announced an environmental policy which, if followed through, could ensure that its palm oil operation has no deforestation footprint. The two couldn't be more different, and yet they're part of the same conglomerate.
We need to expose APP's poor performance and how their rainforest fibre is ending up in toy packaging.
So what to do to help?
Firstly get involved online and help decide whether this particular toy story will have a happy ending? Email Bob Eckert, Mattel's CEO, and tell him (and Barbie) to stop destroying rainforests for their cheap toy packaging.
Also we have a very exciting and unusual activity we need your help with. Very soon we will be launching Barbie Hunt. We've sent hundreds of (second hand) Chainsaw Barbies to our activist network with the challenge to help spread the word about Barbie's dirty rainforest secret by placing Chainsaw Barbie in famous public spaces. We'll then ask our supporters to go track her down, capture her, and wait for instructions for how they can use their Chainsaw Barbie to put pressure on Mattel and other toy companies.
We've heard from Waltham Forest, Dundee and Glasgow that their groups will be out tonight hiding Chainsaw Barbie. Bethnal Green, Edinburgh and Harpenden will be out on Saturday. The Barbie Hunt will officially launch tomorrow, but you can have a sneak peak at the Barbie Hunt map here.
Now would be a great time to get involved. Why not contact your local coordinator and find out how you can join the team placing Chainsaw Barbie around the country over the next few days.
Ian Duff
Forest campaigner
Spotlight on Lauren Tobia
Changing from fur to a suit in
Brussels
My name is Lauren Tobia and I have been an activist with Greenpeace for the last four years. Why and how did I get involved?
At that time I was becoming aware that the world my children were growing up in was changing and I began to become uneasy about the legacy we will hand them. I got involved with Greenpeace by chance. I had always admired Greenpeace's international work but it wasn't until I bumped into some Greenpeace activists in Bristol, running a stall at an event, that I realised how much is done at the local level.
Since then I have baked cakes for Greenpeace, worked on stalls and encouraged people to think about overfishing, painted peoples shoes to make footprints in support of the coal campaign, helped organise film shows, written to my MP, taken photographs, written blogs, made badges, collected signatures - all for my hope for a greener future.
I have travelled to various places in the UK and Europe on actions and appear to have made a habit of donning some sort of fur fabric; firstly monkeying around as an orang-utan for the palm oil protests and recently as a placard waving shark!
And then a few weeks ago I found myself in Brussels in a business suit (a marked change from fur fabric) chained to a post with people from 20 other countries to prevent climate laggards from entering the European business summit. It was an amazing experience.
I get so much out of being actively involved with Greenpeace, meeting inspiring and friendly people and a sense that even a middle aged woman from Bristol can make a difference.
Thank you for all of your hard work helping Greenpeace campaign. We couldn't do it without you.
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