Corporate successes

2006

Japanese fishing company Nissui, along with the other major shareholders, divests its share in the Japanese whaling fleet, forcing the fleet to be nationalised. This followed pressure on Nissui subsidiaries around the world, including seafood company Sealord. Australian cyberactivists sent over 40,000 messages to Sealord to encourage their parent company to withdraw from whaling.

2005

Mitsubishi Paper Mill adopts a new forests policy, agreeing to stop sourcing wood chips from old growth Tasmanian forests. Mitsubishi Paper Mill’s new policy is to buy only woodchips "sourced from plantations or second growth forests of environmentally benign and reclaimed wood."

Following a concerted campaign by Greenpeace and consumers, Australia's top three poultry companies agree to stop feeding their birds genetically engineered (GE) feed.

2004

After pressure by Greenpeace and the Botany community, chemical company Orica withdraws plans to build an incinerator in Botany to destroy 10,000 tonnes of the persistent organic pollutant HCB. Incineration is a major source of another persistent organic pollutant, dioxin.

Queensland Energy Resources announce an end to the Stuart Shale Oil Project near the Great Barrier Reef. Greenpeace campaigned for six years against the project, which would have produced oil four times more greenhouse polluting than oil from the ground. In 2003, Queensland Premier Peter Beattie received 7000 pleas from Greenpeace cyberactivists asking him to reject expansion of the controversial project. In 2001, Suncor, the Canadian joint venture partner, had pulled out of the project due to Greenpeace pressure.

2003

Australia remains municipal waste incineration free, as TEST Energy drops plans for an incinerator in Brighton, Tasmania. This victory, which saves the local community from exposure to carcinogenic and hormone-disrupting dioxins, follows a concerted campaign by Greenpeace and Tasmanians Against Incineration.

Australia's largest hardware retailer, Bunnings, agrees to stop selling destructively logged tropical timbers from Melanesia and Asia, following intense lobbying by environment groups.

2002

Six companies (Three Threes, Sargents, Murray Goulburn, Sakata Rice Snacks, Spring Gully Pickles and Weis) declare their products free of GE-derived ingredients and, so, move from the True Food Guide's "red" category into the "green".

2000

Multinational drinks company, Coca-Cola, agrees to phase out its use of greenhouse-polluting HFCs (hydrofluorocarbons) in refrigeration following Greenpeace's highly visible campaign against the compounds' use during the Sydney Olympics. Following from this, in 2004, Coca-Cola, Unilever and McDonald’s announce the phase-out of HFCs in their refrigeration worldwide.