Tag Archives: japan

Japan’s Uniqlo adds Detox commitment to spring’s wardrobe essentials

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Another fashion brand is detoxing. Japan’s leading international casual wear brand, Uniqlo, begins the new year with a public commitment to eliminate all releases of hazardous chemicals throughout its entire global supply chain and products by 2020.

This comes just a month after Zara, Mango, Esprit and Levi’s announced similar individual commitments, responding to waves of pressure from activists and consumers around the world.

Competitors in the fashion world including GAP, G-Star Raw and Calvin Klein are looking increasingly out of touch now that 12 of the world’s top high street fashion brands have committed to Detox. Do these brands not know that transparent production practices and toxic-free fashion are hot in 2013, or do they simply not care? Continue reading →

Another taxpayer lifeline for Japan’s dying whaling industry?

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I woke up this morning to reports that the Fisheries Agency of Japan, the body in charge of our whaling industry is seeking government funds to repair and re-fit the Nisshin Maru, the main factory processing vessel of the whaling fleet and make it more energy efficient.  My country’s pointless Antarctic programme cannot take place without the Nisshin Maru. Continue reading →

Students: The World Needs You – Apply for the Greenpeace Semester

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APPLY FOR THE GREENPEACE SEMESTER!

Me, on a decommissioned Duke/Progress Energy smokestack (see picture below). Arden, NC. Feb, 2012.

As humans, we sometimes find ourselves in positions that change the way we view the world, or how we fit into it. This week, as we focus on recruiting students for the Greenpeace Semester, I want to share some examples of how my own time in Washington, DC three years ago led me to many of the most profound and exciting experiences I have lived through.

Let me start backwards: I do research for Greenpeace’s PolluterWatch project exposing the lies of the bad guys. Think Koch Industries, ExxonMobil, Duke Energy, and other coal, oil, chemical and industrial interests. In order to protect their relentless pursuit of wealth, power and prestige, the people who lead these companies bankroll a network of propagandists to hijack our perceptions and our politics. I was introduced to this network as the climate denial machine, although their corporate agenda includes everything from cracking workers unions to suppressing voters to privatizing education.

The Greenpeace Semester led me into a climate denier conference in New York City organized by the Heartland Institute. I looked into the eyes of men who hate what I do. I shook their hands. I listened to them gripe about Greenpeace’s work to hold them accountable. I made small talk…and mischief. Continue reading →

Phasing out, cracking up and shutting down – a bad week for nuclear power

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Historic news that Japan will phase out nuclear power has rounded off yet another terrible week for the global nuclear industry.

Japan’s decision to end its reliance on nuclear power by the 2030s means it will join countries such as Germany and Switzerland in turning away from nuclear power after last year’s Fukushima disaster. Continue reading →

Opposition rising to fading whaling industry

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by Junichi Sato, Executive Director of Greenpeace Japan

Whale conservation has lost out to the fading, but still defiant pro-whaling forces, at this year’s International Whaling Commission (IWC) annual meeting.

The meeting in Panama City had initially offered the world hope that the IWC would actually help to save whales, not whalers, after the Latin American nations proposed the creation of a whale sanctuary in the southern Atlantic. Continue reading →

From Alaska to Panama, whales need saving more than ever

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HUMPBACK WHALES IN ALASKA

Humpback whale feeding amongst a colony of seabirds, seen from onboard the Esperanza in the Unimak Pass, Alaska. Greenpeace/Jiri Rezac

The crew of the Esperanza scrambled to grab cameras and binoculars this morning to get a glimpse of so many humpback whales, maybe 40 of them blowing and diving by us, as we made our way through Unimak Pass crossing from the Gulf of Alaska into the Bering Sea.

Serendipitously, as we snapped pictures of these majestic giants swimming through water peppered with hundreds of seabird’s scouting for leftovers, an took in the rich and peaceful sounds of their massive exhaling blows, other Greenpeace activists in Panama at the International Whaling Commission (IWC) were trying to end to whaling, for good.

Between climate change, the industrialization of our seas and continued whaling, whales need saving today more than ever. Continue reading →

Infographic: Japan Switches off Nuclear

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The Fiasco at Fukushima in Japan has reminded the planet that despite the blithe assurances of the nuclear industry, nuclear power is never safe. Over a year after the meltdowns and explosions of three General Electric designed reactors the disaster is far from under control. The so called experts still don’t know where the radioactive cores of these reactors even are. As a result of Fukushima, Japan has shut down every one of its nuclear reactors. They should NEVER split another atom!

Continue reading →

54 reactors down: Japan breaks free of nuclear power

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Greenpeace activists march in the "Energy Shift Parade" through Shibuya on the three-month anniversary of the East Japan earthquake disaster and the start of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear crisis. Greenpeace and the people of Japan are marching in protest against nuclear energy, and calling on the Japanese government to follow the lead set by Germany and Switzerland, and abandon nuclear energy to focus on clean, renewable technology.06/11/2011

With tomorrow’s scheduled shutdown of Japan’s Tomari nuclear power plant the country will be free from nuclear power for the first time since 1966. Can it seize this historic opportunity? Here at Greenpeace we believe it can.

All of Japan’s 54 nuclear reactors will be offline. Now, the country’s government must learn from its mistakes of the past, listen to its people and scientists, keep reactors offline, and usher in Japan’s renewable and sustainable future. History is within their grasp.

There will never be a better time. Since the terrible events of March 11 last year when an earthquake and tsunami triggered the Fukushima nuclear disaster, Japan has shown that nuclear power can be abandoned quickly and with an invisible impact on people’s daily lives.  The Minister for Economy, Trade and Industry Yukio Edano has said there will be no restrictions on electricity use or rolling blackouts.

The operator of the destroyed Fukushima reactors, Tokyo Electric Power added “for the electricity supply and demand in the foreseeable future, we expect to maintain stable supply.” If there are electricity shortages this summer it will be the fault of the government who instead of properly planning energy conservation and pouring resources into renewables have been obsessed with restarting Japan’s discredited nuclear reactors as fast as possible.

So why is the government frantically trying to restart the country’s reactors without the consent of the people living nearby? Why should the people of Japan suffer more nuclear risks? The country’s nuclear reactors and infrastructure are in no state to withstand another major earthquake that experts warn is almost inevitable.

Continue reading →