Greenpeace’s John Sauven inspires

On 11th December we were fortunate to be joined at our xmas party by John Sauven, Executive Director of Greenpeace who happens to live locally.  John gave a wide-ranging talk about the impact of Greenpeace’s work over the last twenty years.  He highlighted in particular campaigns where Greenpeace has shone a light on the supply chains of companies like MacDonalds, who were feeding chickens and cows with soya harvested from land that was previously Amazon rainforest, or the wide-spread use of paper from trees in protected forests.  He talked about the Blue Planet effect – 100 million people in China and 17 million people in the UK have watched the programme. He believes that with popular backing to significantly reduce waste, and the excess use of plastics in particular, there may be real concrete action by supermarkets and others.  He emphasised the importance of local campaigning and consumer power and gave us lots of inspiration for future campaigns.