On May 21st, the Greenpeace Toronto Local Group joined the #NotJustTuna campaign in a global day of action targeting Walmart’s Great Value tuna brand. Here is a special blog by a leader of the group about their action:
Thai Union is the largest canned tuna company, selling to major supermarket chains around the world and capturing our attention at the Toronto Local Group. Aside from its damaging fishing practices, there are also human rights abuses of sea workers happening with Thai Union’s tuna. To tackle this issue, Greenpeace launched a global campaign against the company to put a stop on this environmental and social injustice.
On May 21st, Greenpeace organized a nonviolent direct action that happened as part of a global day of action across North America. The target is none other than the largest retailer in the world – Walmart – and their Great Value tuna brand produced by Thai Union.
For us, our action was to go to the store and take this particular brand off the shelves, hiding it anywhere else inside the store so customers wouldn't be able to purchase it. We placed a shelf talker on the empty shelves with a clear message for shoppers urging them to make the right choice not purchasing Walmart’s Great Value tuna brand. And of course, we took photos and videos to share our action with the world.
During the action, we tried to figure out how to do it without being notice by the store personnel or security. So we decided to be a little creative with this campaign -- we disguised ourselves as regular shoppers. We had four volunteers given the task to be the shoppers and I took on the responsibility of taking the photos.
Trying to stay hidden in public was tricky. To make sure our action would not be too obvious, each of us went to the aisle where the Great Value tuna brand was located, one at a time. We each took a number of tuna cans with us and placed them into our shopping basket.
But we each had exactly two minutes to complete the task and then another person from the team showed up to do the same thing while the previous person roamed around the store hiding the tuna cans in different places. This went on until the last person from our team took the remaining tuna products off the shelf leaving them completely empty with the shelf talker in place for customers to read.
We originally thought it was difficult to pull off this action because store security might stop us. But with careful planning and execution everything went smoothly. What also made it successful is that we actually scouted the location the night before so we exactly knew how to navigate the floor area of the store, where these products are located and how many cans are on display.
We finished the entire action in 10 minutes but decided to stay around a little longer just to see the reaction of the customers when they saw the empty shelves and the shelf talker. One particular shopper I overheard saying: “I won’t be buying that” (referring to Great Value tuna). For me it was a priceless moment and it was a confirmation that our action was truly effective. Then thinking to volunteers all across North America doing the same thing, making the same impact as well was satisfying!
When asked to take this challenge by Greenpeace, our local group gladly accepted as we believe in our little way we can contribute to this global campaign to make a greater impact.
Over the past years volunteering for Greenpeace, I realize that every individual has the power to make that change even if we are just a regular consumer. All we have to do is to make the right choice. The right choice such as making sure that as a consumer we support products that are made under fair labor conditions and most of all made without compromising our environment.