Greenpeace

    Not to over-simplify things but the corporate bad people are ruining our world. Look at Kimberly-Clark—senseless destruction of ancient forests that are home to hundreds of animal and plant species and important carbon stores. Look at Apple— creating products with toxins in them that poison people in the developing world. Your campus can challenge these corporations. Of course you want to get involved. But how do you start?
    Here’s a tip. Call it, Tip of the Week, if you want (but I don’t know what other tips you’ve had this week… ) : Call it, Research. Research? Isn’t that what you do for papers? Yes, research for papers and research for campaigns. Let’s start with Kimberly-Clark.
    The first step is to look at your school’s campus directory or organizational chart to find your school’s director of purchasing. This is the person who you will want to talk to first. While you’re doing this computer-based research, you can do some on the ground research too, specifically in the bathroom. Seriously, do your school’s toilet paper dispensers say “Kimberly-Clark” on them? That’s a good tip that your school uses at least one K-C product. What about the paper towels? Check out www.kleercut.net to see for what K-C brands you should be on the look out. There are some K-C products that might not be easy to spot but that your school might use, for example, microscope lens wipes. However, your director of purchasing will likely be able to go into specifics, and at this stage, it’s good to find out just generally what’s going on at your campus.
    Interested in what Green my Apple research might look like? A first step is to find out where Macs are used, purchased or sold on your campus. Look at design departments, engineering departments, bookstores, “Mac Labs” (Aha! That’s where the Macs are!) and campus procurement offices. Find the name and contact details (phone, email, mailing address) of the person in charge of the computers in each of these locations.  They’ll have titles like “Head of Academic Computing” or “Technology buyer." These are the people to whom you’ll eventually need to talk.
    Sound good? Ok, let’s go!