Greenpeace

Across the country, hundreds of activists and Greenpeace volunteers have been scouring grocery stores for unsustainable seafood products in preparation for Greenpeace’s annual seafood scorecard release.

U.S. consumers buy a large portion of their seafood from grocery stores, but companies like SUPERVALU (with banners like Bristol Farms, Albertson's, Save-a-Lot and Cub foods) still lack a comprehensive sustainable seafood sourcing policy and are selling red list seafood that is overfished and caught with destructive practices.  

I visited two Bristol Farms locations, one in Beverly Hills and the other in South Pasadena. Both stores had multiple red listed fish products on their shelves. Doing detective work on endangered species, I felt like a spy uncovering illicit goods. But the mind-boggling part of the experience is that you don’t have to dig through mislabeled packages or read long ingredients lists – these endangered and unsustainable fish are in plain view.

 (Photo courtesy Alexis Soto)

It’s pretty simple to find a list of endangered seafood. Not only can we use this to inform our purchasing practices, but we can also easily influence stores by speaking to the management and expressing our concerns. It’s important to remember that we fund them and they don’t exist without our support. We need to wake up before it’s too late and take endangered fish off our grocery store shelves.

With the new Greenpeace scorecards coming out this month,grocery stores have the opportunity to implement sustainable seafood policies before their names are besmirched by the blood of orange roughy and Chilean seabass. Due to consumer pressure on these key issues, companies like Trader Joes,Whole Foods, Target and Costco have already improved their purchasing practices.  Speaking to store managers and demanding sustainable seafood policies is a simple, quick way to spark meaningful change. 

  

I just got back from a trip to North Carolina.  I met up with some rockstar student activists in Forest City, NC – where the construction site of Facebook’s newest data center is located.  In November 2010, Facebook disclosed its plans to invest $450 million in the 300,000 sq. ft. facility and to power the center using dirty coal power.

Emma Wicker, one of the activists, grew up 10 minutes away from the construction site.  Emma is stoked to have Facebook bring some much needed jobs to the area, she just wants those jobs to drive an energy revolution, not increase demand for dirty coal power.  Duke Energy, the local electric utility, relies on coal for over 50% of its generation mix and is currently building another large 800MW coal plant just 10 miles away in Cliffside, North Carolina.

The action didn’t just happen in North Carolina on Friday.  Students across the country stood up to demand more from Facebook.  In Austin, Texas, students gathered outside Facebook offices in an effort to talk with employees about the campaign.  The students were denied access to the building, but they were able to deliver a letter for Mark Zuckerberg to the security guard that works on Facebook’s floor, and get the attention of Facebook staff passing by.

As the student activists in Austin said on Friday, “Facebook is in a relationship with coal?  Dislike!”  Join us in asking Facebook to Unfriend Coal by Earth Day 2011.

So, we've got a stellar team of interns here in the San Francisco office, working with the Greenpeace Activist Network. It's no exaggeration to say these folks are the lifeblood of our network - without them, there's no way we could mobilize nearly 1000 activists nationwide to do great things with Greenpeace, like host 200 vigils for Japan all across the country, for example.

Here's what they had to say about why they love their internships. 

Top 10 reasons why interning for Greenpeace is GREAT!

1. Inspiring amazing volunteers and getting people excited to save the planet.
2. Getting a glowing references at the end of your internship.
3. Attending non-violent direct action training and paint banners.
4. Being part of a great team.  It's a fun office with lots of energy. People don’t walk around like zombies.
5. You can be yourself.
6. There’s flexibility in terms of how you spend your time.
7. Learning how to mobilize people online.
8. Improving your communications skills.
9. It’s like internship boot camp.
10. You get to meet Greenpeace campaigners, media officers, direct actions team people who are friendly and will talk with you about how they got to have the cool job they have.

So what are you waiting for?  Apply to intern with the Greenpeace Activist Network in San Francisco today!