Chiquita Joins Tar Sands Oil Boycott

by | Dec 19, 2011

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Fruit producer Chiquita Brands has become the latest company to stop using oil sourced from Canada’s tar sands, following a campaign by environmental group ForestEthics, reports the Financial Times.

The environmental group had targeted Chiquita and fellow fruit producer Dole in a campaign launched in August. ForestEthics took out full-page adverts in USA Today to highlight and criticize the companies’ use of oil from tar sands deposits in Alberta, Canada, for shipping and refrigeration. The group subsequently encouraged its supporters to bombard the fruit firms’ Facebook pages with criticism of their tar sands oil use, effectively forcing Chiquita to shut down its page’s comments section for a time, the FT reports.

Chiquita has now committed to identifying – and eliminating from its list of fuel suppliers – all of the companies that it believes sell diesel made from tar sands oils. In response, the Alberta Enterprise Group – a business group representing local employers – has called for a boycott of Chiquita bananas, the paper reports.

According to the FT, Chiquita is the 15th company to boycott, or reduce their use of tar sands oil, including Walgreens, Gap and Levi’s.

ForestEthics is now targeting Safeway and Walmart in its campaign, the newspaper reports.

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