This blog is by Ethan Buckner (@ethanbuckner), ForestEthics US organizer.
Last week, dozens of activists disrupted business-as-usual for Coca-Cola and PepsiCo at the Sustainable Brands 2014 conference in San Diego. The conference drew thousands of corporate sustainability professionals for four days of speakers and workshops at a beachside resort.
Coca-Cola and Pepsi were among the conference’s corporate attendees, and both companies were there to strut their stuff.
But we know that neither Coke nor Pepsi (and no other company for that matter) can claim to be ‘sustainable’ if they continue to fuel their tens of thousands of cars and trucks with tar sands fuel. Yes, I’m talking about cancer-causing, strip-mined, uncleanable-if-spilled, carbon-bomb tar sands.
Coke and Pepsi, two of America’s largest private consumers of oil, have not yet committed ditching tar sands fuel in their delivery vehicles. So activists from ForestEthics and Sierra Club stopped by Sustainable Brands to make sure every corporate attendee got the message: tar sands are the dirtiest oil on Earth, and no company should have any business using it. You can send a message to Coke and Pepsi, too.
Check out great pics from the action after the jump.
We made sure Sustainable Brands attendees got our message when they woke up in the morning:
Image Credit ForestEthics/Michael Wesley
We were there to greet them at lunch:
And we were there to crash the corporate beach party with over 20 kayakers, LED lightboards, and a giant neon banner reading: “Coca-Cola & PepsiCo: Stop Driving Tar Sands Destruction!”
Image Credit ForestEthics/Michael Wesley
By now, Coke and Pepsi should get the picture. We’ve delivered 70,000 petition signatures. We’ve spoken out at corporate conferences and shareholder meetings. We’ve protested by land and by sea. Our drumbeat will only get louder until Coke and Pepsi do the right thing and get out of the tar sands.
If you care about our planet’s well being, take a moment right now to send a message to big soda CEOs, and tell them to ditch tar sands oil.