Written by: Josh Chamberland, Sophomore at Bowling Green State University, Greenpeace Semester Alum, Greenpeace Student Network Campus Coordinator

Operation Tiger was the first campaign I ran and took part in as a Campus Coordinator through the Greenpeace Student Network at Bowling Green State University (BGSU). It all started as an idea and a goal, to help stop the destruction of Indonesian rainforests by Asia Pulp and Paper. At the beginning of last year I took this campaign idea to the first environmental club on campus I found and after a couple meetings, I pitched the campaign idea. They weren’t up to running a campaign at that time, so I proceeded to organize a core group of friends who were interested in running this campaign with me.

The first semester started off fairly slow, just gathering information and having meetings with administrators to discuss our goals and see what they had to say. In the second semester a few friends and I went to the first ever Student Network Activist Convergence (SNAC). At SNAC, we really learned how to take the next steps needed for our campaign. When we returned, we were all super stoked to get back on campus to really bring change to BGSU that would have worldwide effects.

We officially kicked off the campaign to the public early second semester with a petition drive, calling on our President and Board of Trustees to commit to transitioning the university to using only 100% post-consumer recycled paper products all over campus. We had student’s dress up in tiger and orangutan suits to make the first official day of the petition exciting. Shortly after our event, our story was featured on the front page of our school newspaper the BG News. Continue reading →