Corporate Campaigns: Working in the Marketplace to Defend Communities

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Corporate Campaigns Working in the Marketplace
to Defend Communities the Environment
Taking Precautionary Action The Roadmap for
Success Greensboro, NC November 17, 2007
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We need to use all of the Tools in the Toolbox to
protect communities the environment

• Grassroots Organizing
• Litigation
• Corporate or Markets Campaigns
• Legislation
• Regional National Networks

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What is a Market Campaign?

• Creates leverage and
• pressure to protect communities the
  environment
• Uses the leverage we have against public
  companies to pressure the companies they buy from
• Works to end the market for destructive practices
• Aims to create a market for alternatives

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Why does a market campaign work?

• Focuses on a public company who is buying,
  selling, or using resources coming from our
  communities that we want to protect or an
  industry we want to change (or both).
• Uses image against a company ie no one wants to
  be known as the forest destroyer
• Pressures public target to change their policies
• Once the policy is adopted it gets the public
  target to use its clout to pressure the
  destructive company
• Uses the new policy to pressure the rest of the
  industry into changing.
• Goal is to make the environmental standard the
  norm

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Benefits to Market Campaigns

• Some real changes in store policies
• Creates leverage that can be used to protect
  communities the environment on the ground
• Can create pressure to stop destruction
• Increase consumer demand/knowledge for
  environmentally sustainable products
• Regional National Solidarity
• Links local community struggles to community
  struggles around country and abroad
• Site for education on links between corporate
  policies, environmental destruction, and global
  trade
• Site for pro-active organizing and vision when
  legislative angles arent viable

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Components of a markets campaign

• Chain of Custody Research- figuring out what
  products come out of an area, where they go, who
  buys them, and who sells them.

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Our Forests
Loggers
Wood Dealers
Chip Mills
Sawmills
Pulp and Paper Mills
Lumber
Residual Chips
Chips
Paper
Pulp
Converting Facility
Distribution Centers
Stores
Consumers
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Components of a markets campaign

• Communications with companies This includes
  negotiation of policies.

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Components of a markets campaign

• Public campaigning coalition building ,
  organizing, media, materials, actions, events,
  and more..

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Components of a markets campaign

• Implementation- Follow through to make sure they
  do what they committed to do

• For Example
• Comprehensive Report Detailing Environmental
  Progress Within Office Supply Industry Released
  in 2007
• Bowater Annual Implementation Report

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Components of a markets campaign

• Identifying and mapping endangered communities
  ecosystems in your region

Example Dogwood Alliance, and the Conservation
Biology Institute teamed up to produce
comprehensive maps of Endangered Forests
throughout the South
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Examples of Recent Market Campaigns
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Case study The Staples campaign

• March 2000, activists gather to discuss markets
  campaign and endangered forests. Process to pick
  a paper target launched. Staples as target
  finalized in August 2000
• In November of 2000, first Day of Action
  targeting Staples for the selling endangered
  forests (75 actions)
• In the next two years, over 600 demonstrations,
  20 arrests, two events at the shareholder
  meetings, one share holder resolution, an REM
  PSA, 4 days of action, CEO bird-dogging, a plane
  banner, tens of thousands of postcards, 200
  religious leaders sign a letter to Staples, and
  untold phones calls all brand staples as a forest
  destroyer

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Campaign Demands

• Phase out products originating from endangered
  forests, including endangered forests in the
  Southern US, the Canadian Boreal and US National
  Forests
• Immediately commit to increasing the average post
  consumer recycled content in all paper products
  to 30 and set a goal for achieving an average of
  50 post consumer recycled content in all paper
  products
• Work with suppliers to end unsustainable forestry
  practices such as the conversion of forests to
  plantations and to ensure any virgin wood fiber
  comes from well-managed forests

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It took a village

• The groups who have been involved in the paper
  campaign targeting Staples include American Lands
  Alliance, Allegheny Defense Project, Cascadia
  Forest Alliance, Center for a New American Dream,
  Dogwood Alliance, Earth First!, ecopledge.com,
  ForestEthics, Green Corps, Kentucky Heartwood,
  Sierra Student Coalition, Southern Appalachian
  Biodiversity Project, Free the Planet, Heartwood,
  Native Forest Network, National Forest Protection
  Alliance, Rainforest Action Network, Rainforest
  Relief, ReThink Paper, Student Environmental
  Action Coalition, Wild Alabama, Iowa STEP,
  Shenendoah Ecosystem Defense Group, GrassRoots
  Recycling Network, Indiana Forest Alliance and
  tons of local groups.

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Pictures from the Staples protests
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Staples, Yeah we logged that
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Staples encounters Direct Action
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Staples branding as forest destroyer
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(No Transcript)
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REM Does a PSA for the paper campaign
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Staples Destroys Forests plane banner at Red Sox
game
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What else happened

• During the campaign we talked to them on a
  regular basis in face to face meetings
• We did a report that linked them to a direct Old
  Growth pulp source. This story ran in the Wall
  street journal.
• We ran a bird dogging campaign of a candidate MA
  governor who was on the Staples board
• A letter was sent from 200 religious leaders to
  the Staples CEO
• Their was a shareholder resolution and a presence
  at 2 shareholder meetings, worked with As you
  SOW, Trillium, Calvert and Green Century Fund

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The Victory

• In November of 2002 Staples made a public
  commitment to stop selling products that contain
  fiber from Endangered Forests and to achieve an
  average of 30 Post Consumer Recycled fiber.
• On a teleconference call done jointly by the
  paper campaign and Staples there was over 50
  reporters

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Staples Victory in the Wall Street Journal
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Thank Yous

• A few month after Staples made a commitment full
  page ad in USA today
• We know that the company framed this and put it
  in there headquarters

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Staples Progress

• Staples has engaged their suppliers on their
  negative practices and started shifting supply
  away from the most destructive logging companies
• Begun implementing a comprehensive chain of
  custody requirement for its suppliers, tracking
  forests to the shelves

• 29 of Staples fiber is post-consumer recycled
  content and has set a new target of 50
• Staples has determined its ecological footprint
  in the Southern U.S and Canadian Boreal and is
  now overlaying the analysis with endangered
  forest maps in these regions

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Over packaged world
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Packaging is a problem.
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Do Your Home Work!
Each of us belongs to a particular landscape,
one that informs who we are, a place that carries
our history, our dreams, holds us to a moral line
of behavior that transcends thought. And in each
of these places home work is required, a
participation in the public life to make certain
all is not destroyed under the banner of
progress, expediency, or ignorance. We can not
do it alone. This is the hope of a bed rock
democracy, standing our ground in the places we
love, together. Terry Tempest Williams
Juncrock Timber Sale, Mt. Hood National Forest
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OR
The choice is ours.
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• P.O. Box 7645
• Asheville, NC 28802
• 828-251-2525
• www.dogwoodalliance.org