Greenpeace Blog

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

A virtual party on a virtual ship

Posted by jamie — 25 February 2009 at 11:27am - Comments

The Dove in Second Life Tonight there's a party being held on a Greenpeace ship to which everyone is invited. Go on board, look around, chat to the other guests. Just one small point - the ship isn't docked in the Amazon or Tokyo or Rotterdam, it's in popular virtual world phenomenon Second Life.

'The Dove', currently anchored off Commonwealth Island, is the creation of a group of Greenpeace supporters in Second Life and one in particular - who goes by the name of Anise Dollopofmayo in-world - has been doing the virtual equivalent of beating the panels and raising the masts. Along with the information hut which has been there for some time, the ship is going to act as a venue for events (such as tonight's party) and a recruitment point for new members.

The shindig runs from 7.30 to 9.30pm GMT (or 11.30am to 1.30pm Second Life time) and click this link to be teleported to the embarkation point. If you haven't used Second Life before (which you can download here), it's only fair to warn you that you'll need to go through an induction process when you first log in which can take some time.

It's certainly an experience, although my flying skills are not all they could be and I have a tendency to crash in spectacular fashion. Oh, the humiliation.

Article tagged as: second life, ships, supporters

From forests to ashes: fires in Indonesia

Posted by jamie — 24 February 2009 at 10:57am - Comments

Some rather grim images were sent out from our picture desk yesterday. Taken on Sunday by Ardiles Rante, they show the devastation caused by fire in the peatland forests outside Pekanbaru, the capital of Riau province in Sumatra. So that's another few thousand tonnes of carbon dioxide sent up into the atmosphere, and seeing photos like these make me realise our ongoing campaign to protect these forests from the ever-expanding palm oil industry is even more essential.

Fire burns through peatland forest in Sumatra, Indonesia

Article tagged as: forest fires, forests, images, indonesia, peatlands, photos, riau, sumatra

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