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Report Exposes BP Amoco "Greenwashing"

October 20, 1999

Contact: Phoebe VanScoy
P
HONE: 1-877-EARTH-46

Despite claims that they are a "green" oil company, BP Amoco’s track record suggests another color — oily black.

The company with the green logo that boasts "any colour you want.. as long as it’s green" is responsible for a long list of environmental problems, ranging from toxic discharges in Alaska to oil spills in California to tons of emissions that contribute to climate change, according to a report released today by Earth Day 2000 and U.S. PIRG.

"BP might as well stand for ‘Big Polluter,’" VanScoy said. "They drill for oil in sensitive ecosystems, contribute to global warming, and pollute the environment every day."

BP Amoco is among the corporations Earth Day 2000 is naming to its Earth Day Action List, a campaign organizing consumers, investors and students to use their buying, working and investing power to encourage corporations to become responsible citizens of the Earth.

"We want to persuade BP to stop lobbying for permission to drill in the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which is the only part of America’s Arctic not open for oil and gas exploration," VanScoy said. "BP should consider itself on notice that if it refuses to change its plans by April 22 - the next Earth Day - a powerful number of consumers will voice their disgust by refusing to work for, buy from or invest in the company."

The new U.S. PIRG report, "Green Words, Dirty Deeds: A PIRG Expose of BP Amoco’s Greenwashing," documents a long list additional misdeeds:

"For BP Amoco to live up to their public relations claims, they would have to significantly change corporate policy," concluded Phoebe VanScoy, Outreach Director for Earth Day 2000. "Last year BP Amoco did just that, and dropped out of the Global Climate Coalition. We urge them to break ranks again, and cancel their drilling plans for the Arctic Refuge."

Earth Day 2000 is a non-profit, non-partisan organization that seeks to sustain and strengthen the spirit of Earth Day during the Environmental Decade of the 1990s and into the next millennium by helping people make choices in their everyday lives that protect the environment. The organization’s aim: a cleaner and healthier planet to celebrate on the 30th anniversary of Earth Day in 2000. The organization’s web page is www.earth-day2000.org.

The report can be found at PIRG’s web site:

http://www.pirg.org/enviro/arctic/index.htm


Earth Day 2000 is the consumer clearinghouse for the environmental decade working with consumers to encourage corporations to be environmentally responsible and to keep the 30th anniversary of Earth Day on April 22, 2000 free of corporate greenwashing. Earth Day 2000 is leading efforts to call on some of America's leading corporations to take simple, sensible actions to save the planet prior to Earth Day 2000. Consumers and investors are joining students on college campuses taking a "Green Pledge" to withhold their working, buying and investment power from companies that fail to take that pledge. In this case, Coca-Cola is being asked to meet its pledge of 25 percent recycled content in its plastic bottles.

The GrassRoots Recycling Network is a North American network of community-based activists dedicated to achieving a sustainable economy based on the principle of Zero Waste. GRRN advances the principle of producer responsibility for product and packaging waste through opinion maker education and direct consumer action. GRRN highlights responsible corporations and targets wasteful corporations by direct consumer action.



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