cattle

Remember the photoshoot we staged outside a fashion industry event in Italy? The one reminding companies that make and use leather that the Amazon is not for walking over? Here's a great little video which I neglected to post last week, showing our models strutting their stuff for the rainforest.

Italian fashion: stylish and sophisticated, but unfortunately may be linked to the destruction of the Amazon rainforest. As cattle ranching is responsible for about 80 per cent of deforestation in Brazil, it is likely that Brazilian shoe leather comes from areas of cleared rainforest. So a team of Greenpeace activists have set up an alternative photoshoot today outside a major industry event in Italy to remind the world's shoe and leather companies that we can't walk all over the Amazon.

Jeff Swartz, CEO of Timberland wrote recently in the Harvard Business Review, 'You can tell a lot about how your day is going to unfold by the number of e-mails that are waiting for you ...  On June 1, 2009, they kept coming, and coming, and coming.'

The emails flooding Jeff Swartz's inbox were coming in response to a newly released Greenpeace report about deforestation in the Amazon. The gist of the report was that (a) Brazilian cattle farmers are illegally clear-cutting Amazon rainforests to create pastures, and (b) the leather from their cows might be winding up in shoes - including Timberland's.

Since we published the Slaughtering the Amazon report, the Amazon cattle campaign has moved rapidly, with shoe companies and cattle producers feeling the pressure from you, and changing the way they do business as a result. In this video Sarah explains the progress we've made so far, and check out www.greenpeace.org.uk/bertin for the recent news.