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Taking our Tar Sands campaign to Dole & Chiquita's Facebook pages

August 19th, 2011

On August 17th, ForestEthics launched two ads in USA Today, asking Dole & Chiquita to take responsibility for their consumption of destructive Tar Sands fuel to ship bananas. Because so many of our supporters are concerned about the toxic impacts of Tar Sands and other extreme fossil fuels, we invited them to make sure Dole and Chiquita saw the ad...by sharing it on the companys' Facebook pages.

The impact on both brands was swift and overwhelming, as each company was suddenly confronted with a wave of images depicting the ad's banana/gas nozzle hybrid.1 As described in a Forbes blog post and Care2 blog post, each company tried in vain to address the issue before ultimately deciding to communicate with the mass of individuals urging them to change their ways.

And to their responses, ForestEthics responded in kind:

Dole's Response and ForestEthics Reply as of 2:34 PM PST on 8/17/11
 Chiquita's response and ForestEthics reply as of 3:16 PM PST on 8/18/112

ForestEthics is encouraged to see the companies entering into dialogue, but as you can see, we found their responses to be lacking. We look forward to the day when Dole & Chiquita make public commitments to delivering bananas without toxic Tar Sands fuel.

Last week, our amazing activists also organized some creative offline actions in Chicago, Los Angeles, and Portland. You can read more about them on an It's Getting Hot in Here blog post and GreenAnswers.com.


1 Before we even announced the ads to the world via press release, noted Ad Executive Arnie DiGeorge photographed the ad from his morning paper and tweeted it out! We're so flattered. :-)

2 The "Chiquita Banana" Facebook page blocked ForestEthics' organizational Facebook account, as well as the personal Facebook accounts of ForestEthics staff from posting on their wall and/or commenting on their page. Therefore, ForestEthics' response that you see in the screencap above was made on this Chiquita-related Facebook page.

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