What sets Phil Radford apart from others is the approach he uses to convince the many stakeholders into either converting to the use of clean energy alternatives or engage in practices cause lesser harm to the global climate. He strongly believes in changing corporate behaviour by pressuring large companies to change their practices and enlist them as allies in pushing for strong environmental protections. He has achieved many successes in this area, especially during his term as the Executive Director of Greenpeace USA.
Firstly, he managed to persuaded major U.S. companies to cancel their contracts with Asia Pulp and Paper (APP) – the world’s third largest paper company which was destroying ancient Sumatran forests through deforestation in order to produce pulp. Ancient forests are actually very important for carbon storage and biodiversity. The act of forest clearning releases high amounts of greenhouse gas emissions which in turn causes global warming.
Credits: www.greenpeace.org
Initially, he negotiated with APP but their stance on it was very weak, as seen by them proposing a weak bill. Thus, Radford decided to cut APP’s market by lobbying companies to recognise APP’s damage to the environment and successfully persuaded companies who are doing business with APP (Mattel, Disney, Hasbro, Lego, Gucci and Versace etc) to boycott until APP decides to end deforestation. True enough, APP eventually agreed and announced it would stop turning rainforests into pulp by 2007, and switching exclusively to plantation wood and bamboo.
Secondly, he managed to boycott Kimberly-Clark, the manufacturer of Kleenex and Scott toilet paper, who engaged in questionable sourcing practices for paper pulp by destroying the boreal forest of Canada. A campaign, known as Kleercut, was organised which intervened in Kleenex commercial shoots, convinced 22 universities and colleges to cancel contracts, garner over 1000 protests and even gotten around 500 companies to boycott the brand. Worrying about their reputation, Kimberly-Clark eventually pledged to stop sourcing non-Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified wood by 2012 and set a 2011 goal to have 40% of the fiber in North American tissue products either recycled or certified by the FSC.
Credits: www.wikipedia.com
Thirdly, he led a campaign which targeted at America’s major supermarket chains to stop selling threatened species of fishes, adopt sustainable seafood policies, and even lobby for policies like marine reserves to protect the oceans. Some of the threatened fishes includes Chilean sea bass, Atlantic cod, swordfish, orange roughy, hoki, red snapper and sharks.
This campaign proved to be successful as seen by the overwhelming responses by the following supermarkets. Cotsco halted the sale several fish species widely considered to be threatened by overharvesting, while Trader Joe’s started selling seafood from only sustainable sources and even promised to use its buying power to influence change in the seafood industry. Some supermarkets like Wegmans, Whole Foods, Safeway Inc., Target, and Trader Joe’s even began to lobby for strong ocean policies, such as protecting the Ross Sea and Bering Sea Canyons. Through the negotiation with supermarket retailers, it actually shows that it is also important to get companies involved in the actual policy making instead of the campaign to be a one-way instruction of what and what not to leave on the supermarkets’ shelves.