Successes

Our first ever campaign, launched with the founding of Greenpeace in 1971, ultimately resulted in a global ban of nuclear weapons testing. Since then, we’ve played a pivotal role in a number of successes on the way to a greener, juster and more peaceful world, including:

  • - the adoption of a ban on toxic waste exports to less developed countries
  • - a moratorium on commercial whaling
  • - a United Nations convention providing for better management of world fisheries
  • - a Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary
  • - a 50-year moratorium on mineral exploitation in Antarctica
  • - bans on the dumping at sea of radioactive and industrial waste and disused oil installations and
  • - an end to large-scale driftnet fishing on the high-seas.

Below are just a few of the positive environmental changes that Greenpeace has helped to bring about in the last few years (for a more comprehensive list, have a browse through our history). Every one of these successes was made possible by the generous financial help of our supporters.


Success! Polish coal mine construction halted

Posted by jossc — 13 March 2009 at 11:10am - Comments

Greenpeace climbers make their point at Jozwin II B open cast mine site last December

Greenpeace climbers making their point at the Jozwin II B site last December

Great news just in from Poland, where work on the giant Jóźwin IIB open-cast pit and coal mine near Konin has been suspended. Following a legal challenge submitted last December by Greenpeace, a Polish court has ruled that there were problems with the environmental assessment process undertaken before work began on the site. Construction has now been halted while the process is reviewed.

This is a big victory - Jóźwin IIB was the site for our most recent Climate Rescue Station, set up last winter to remind delegates at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in nearby Poznań that tackling climate change and building new coal-fired power stations are fundamentally incompatible aspirations. It will be particularly well-received by many of the peaceful activists who were attacked by mine workers at the end of last year during the protests.

Article tagged as: climate change, co2 emissions, coal, fossil fuels, open-cast, poland, poznan, successes

Success! Philips make a recycling policy u-turn

Posted by jossc — 26 February 2009 at 3:27pm - Comments

An old Philips TV at a scrap yard in Ghana

An old Philips TV at a scrap yard in Ghana

Last week we broke the shocking story about what actually happens to our electronic waste; instead of being safely recycled in the UK or Europe, much of it is instead being exported as 'second-hand goods' to places like Nigeria, China and India. Once there it's either sold for scrap, illegally dumped, or broken apart for recycling by some of the poorest people in the country, with no safety measures to protect them from the dangerous toxic chemicals like mercury, cadmium and lead which the e-waste contains.

Article tagged as: africa, e-waste, nigeria, philips, successes, toxic chemicals, toxics, TVs

Follow Greenpeace UK