*** PLEASE CIRCULATE! ***
A C T I O N A L E R T A C T I O N A L E R T A C T I O N A L E R T
Calling all forest-lovers and responsible consumers!
On Tuesday, May 4th FAN and the forests need your help!
Last month, during the Day of Action Against Home Depot,
hundreds of activists and consumers from across North America joined together
to tell Home Depot, the largest retailer of old growth wood in the world to
"Go Green." Today, old growth from the world's quickly vanishing rainforests
is still for sale on Home Depot's shelves.
Tuesday is the busiest day of the corporate work week. The peak of a workday
is between 11 am and 1 pm. Leading up to Home Depot's May 27th
shareholders meeting, FAN and other groups across North America are declaring
every Tusday FAX BLAST DAY. FAN has volunteered to take on TUESDAY, MAY 4th,
and WE NEED YOUR HELP! We have committed to ensuring that Home Depot's fax
machines are bombarded with faxes from concerned citizens and responsible
consumers.
Tell your friends and family! Re-post this message far and wide! Call all
of those folks you met on Earth Day! Enlist your local Girl Guides (... and Boy
Scouts, and church groups, and day cares and High Schools and campus clubs
and service clubs and retirement homes and....)! There's strength in
numbers!
Sample Letter:
Dear Home Depot:
You have been making promises to phase out unsustainably harvested wood
since 1992. In that time, 32 watersheds in British Columbia's Great Bear
Rainforest have been clearcut. The Amazon has lost over 20 million acres of
rainforest (an area the size of Deleware each year) and Southeast Asia has
lost over 2 million acres of rainforest. Home Depot sells wood from each of
these places.
I am writing to urge you to stop selling wood from old growth forests. It
is simply unacceptable in this day and age to sell lumber that is from our
last remaining old growth trees. Other major industry leaders such as Nike,
IBM, Kinko's, and Hallmark have made the commitment to go old growth free,
and are taking steps to keep their promises. It's time for Home Depot to do
the same.
Sincerely,
Your name and address
---------------------
Unless we put an end to Home Depot's $24 billion annual trade in old growth
wood, we will lose the world's remaing ancient forests within a generation.
ON TUESDAY, MAY 4th, PLEASE FAX:
1) Annette Verschuren (president of Home Depot Canada) FAX 416-412-4215
If you can't get through, please phone her assistant, Boglin, at 416-412-4233
and ask her why not.
2) Arthur Blank (president & CEO) FAX 770-384-2337, ph. 770-384-2723
3) Bill Hamlin (executive vp of merchandising): FAX 770-384-2840,
Ph.770-384-5852, Asstistant's Ph. 770-433-8211x15851
Background info:
Why Home Depot?
******************
Home Depot is the world's largest retailer of ancient forest products. On
the shelves of their over 700 stores you can find products ripped out of
the heart of every major threatened forest ecosystem on the planet. Since
1992 they have consistently maintained they are a good environmental
citizen while breaking every commitment they have made to protect ancient
forests. Now is the time for grassroots activists across the hemisphere
(U.S., Canada and Chile) to unite and show Home Depot that we won't allow
them to profit off the destruction of the world's remaining ancient
forests. With only 22% of the world's ancient forests left the continued
sale of products derived from this forests is not only barbaric and immoral
but sheer idiocy! Home Depot must stop!
The Canadian Connection.
*************************
Home Depot is growing rapidly here in Canada, with over 40 stores already
open and another 13 scheduled to open throughout 1999, they are fast
becoming Canada's largest retailer of ancient forest products. Across the
nation, Home Depot's are selling:
- Cedar originating from Interfor, the largest (and nastiest) logging
company logging in Canada's rainforest. Cedar trees provide key bear
denning habitat for the
grizzly, kermode (spirit) and black bears of the Great Bear Rainforest.
- Hemlock, used for door frames made by Sauder Mouldings, a sister company
of Interfor.
- Numerous other ancient forest products on the shelves of your local Home
Depot, from the endangered Redwoods of Northern California, to Mahogany
products from the Amazon and SE Asia.
Working together to ban the trade in ancient forest products.
********************************************************
A broad coalition of groups including American Lands Alliance, Rainforest
Action Network, Student Environmental Action Coalition, Free the Planet,
Action Resource Center, Rainforest Relief, Forest Action Network, Sierra
Student Coalition, Canadian Rainforest Network and activists in three
countries are organizing toconvince Home Depot to go old-growth-free.
An organizer's kit with background information, the latest on Home Depot PR
efforts, campaign materials and information on how to do a Dead Rainforest
Tour is available from the Forest Action Network in Bella Coola. CONTACT
FAN TODAY! fanbc@envirolink.org
More information about the campaign is available at
http://www.homedepotsucks.com,
http://www.ran.org, and of course, http://www.fanweb.org
If we don't take action to save the world's forests - who will?
Be well,
Dayna
Forest Action Network
FOREST ACTION NETWORK
Box 625, Bella Coola, 'BC', V0T 1C0
ph: (250) 799-5800 fax: (250) 799-5830
email: fanbc@envirolink.org website: http://www.fanweb.org