A few of us participated in an action at the Apple store in London’s Regent Street this week. The London event was one of several around the world in support of a main campaign running in the USA, to persuade Apple to look hard at how it powers the iCloud. Instead of relying heavily on coal for the electricity, Greenpeace are asking Apple to source much much more of their electricity from renewable sources.
I was part of the “Apple” team – 6 of us discretely smuggled baskets of apples, made from compacted coal dust, into the huge and busy store in Regent Street at lunchtime and gave them away to customers. My pitch was upstairs on the right, where people queue for appointments. At first, customers weren’t too receptive to these beautifully crafted free gifts, but once one person took one, they began to think they might be missing out on something and they started to ask for an “apple”. I have never seen such a heavily staffed store and although we had T shirts in vivid blue that blended in with the staff “uniform” I was rumbled fairly quickly and asked to leave with my basket still about half full. In fact I was asked to leave three times by different staff members as I made my way back to the door – very politely but firmly! So I gave the rest of the apples away at the door, to customers coming in and out of the store.
While the Apple team was doing that, another team put banners up on the store windows – see the main website for pix. And while you’re there send an email to Apple CEO Tim Cook and help to keep the pressure on. A couple of other teams engaged with the Apple store in various ways through the day, to deliver Greenpeace’s message to the management and staff.
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