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THE WITNESS
As a Toxics Campaigner, John works with lawmakers, coalition partners, activists, and the media in Greenpeace's efforts to protect vulnerable communities from dangerous chemical facilities. 
The disaster at a fertilizer facility in West, Texas Wednesday night has killed and injured many people according to news reports, and our thoughts are with those impacted by this tragedy. New aerial photos of the explosion show the devastation to the neighboring community, including a nearby school and nursing home. Continue reading
Detox Protest At Levi's Headquarters
The world’s biggest denim brand joins ten other clothing companies that have made credible commitments to Detox, including the world’s largest fashion retailer, Zara.
Levi’s commitment comes just eight days after we launched our “Toxic Threads: Under Wraps” report in Mexico, and screened a documentary about a family struggling to hold factories in the region to account for the pollution they are causing, including suppliers of brands like Levi’s. Continue reading
Greenpeace activists dressed as mannequins staged a “mannequin revolt” outside Levi’s flagship store in San Francisco, Dec. 6, 2012, to demand Levi’s commit to eliminating all hazardous chemicals from its supply chain. Greenpeace released the “Toxic Threads: Under Wraps” report Wednesday detailing the extent of the toxic water pollution coming from two of Mexico’s largest clothing manufacturers, both of which supply Levi’s. Join the campaign, and let’s give Levi’s 501,000 reasons to #GoForth and Detox! Continue reading
Greenpeace activists install a group of mannequins around a large waste water discharge pipe belonging to the Linjiang Waste Water Treatment Plant in China
Well, what do you know? Mango, another fashion brand based in Spain has made a commitment to Greenpeace to eliminate toxic chemicals. One more win for #peoplepower! Continue reading
They say you can tell next season’s hottest trend by looking at the color of the rivers in Mexico and China. That’s because global fashion brands like Calvin Klein, GAP and Victoria’s Secret are using hazardous chemicals and dyes to make our clothes. These chemicals poison our rivers, and traces of these hazardous chemicals also end up remaining in many of the garments people buy.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. Around the world, hundreds of thousands of people are calling on brands to make fashion that doesn’t cost the Earth. Just this week, the world’s largest retailer ZARA committed to clean-up their supply chain after over 320,000 people joined the campaign calling on the brand to Detox. True People Power in action.
Our campaign calling upon Zara to “Detox” began just over 48 hours ago. Already over 200,000 concerned customers, activists and fashionistas have signed up, calling on the world’s largest fashion retailer to create fashion without pollution.
What an incredible response.
With such an enormous groundswell of people calling on the company to take responsibility for the pollution caused when its clothes are made and washed, it is not surprising that the brand has decided to respond.
Have you heard that there is an election coming up? I guess people think it’s pretty important since it’s ALL anyone talks about, right?
Well, except for Hurricane Isaac, the start of the NFL preseason, Red Sox dumping four players (ok, I’m from New England, so that may just be my radar), hundreds being killed in Syria, and the Obama administration raising fuel economy standards. Wait, what was that last one? The Obama administration did something in August of an election year? I thought that wasn’t possible, I thought NOTHING got done in an election year? Hm, I feel a bit like the GPS in my friend’s car the other day: “recalculating…”
The fact is, new policies DO happen in an election year, and I was incredibly heartened to see that I’m not the only one who thinks so. Today, in the New York Times, Governor Christine Todd Whitman penned an articulate call to the Environmental Protection Agency to use its existing authority to prevent chemical disasters. The quote that grabbed me:
Read the original Huffington Post blog from our Toxics Campaigner John Deans
View of the Plant A complex at Dow's Freeport, Texas operations center. Texas Operations is Dow's largest integrated site. The site contains more than 3,200 acres of waterways and pipeline corridors and houses more than 1,900 buildings across the site.
Despite a decade of security measures in our airports, monuments, and cities, tens of millions of Americans in major metropolitan areas are at risk of deadly exposure to toxic chemicals. Thousands of chemical facilities are vulnerable to accidents or acts of terrorism, and almost 500 of these facilities are located in or near America’s most populous cities. Continue reading
What would you do if 60,000 people asked you to do something?
I bet you would sit up and take notice.
Yesterday, in a meeting with White House staff, Greenpeace joined representatives from a coalition of over 100 organizations to deliver 60,833 signatures to the White House calling on President Obama to use his authority to prevent chemical disasters. Labor union representatives talked about the workers who would be the first to die in a poison gas release at a chemical facility. Environmental Justice leaders described the communities surrounding dangerous facilities who are next in line to suffer the results of a disaster, and who are most often communities of color and low-income communities. Health experts explained that hospitals would be overrun and incapable of responding the casualties of a poison gas catastrophe.
Continue reading
Dear Friends,
Thanks to all 46,000 of you who signed the petition to President Obama urging him to prevent chemical plant disasters like Bhopal. EPA administrator, Lisa Jackson, recently gave the green light to assess all of their options to prevent chemical disasters. Soon we will have a meeting at the White House to present the petitions. Before we do we wanted to invite anyone who didn’t sign on to join in today. We need to show the White House that they’re broad support for strong action by the EPA. So far over 100 other national, state and local organizations called on the President to take this action. Continue reading
