Greenpeace draws attention to unsustainable seafood on Supermarket day

The touring cars that drive the participants from supermarket to supermarket will be followed by the mobile billboards all day. In the supermarkets Greenpeace volunteers cover unsustainable seafood products with ‘red guppies’ which represent fish in need. Greenpeace wants all supermarkets to stop selling unsustainable seafood and to start drafting a sustainable seafood policy.   

Femke Nagel, head oceans campaigner for Greenpeace said: “Yellow fin tuna and North Sea cod are seriously overfished and plaice is being caught in a destructive manner. Cod and plaice are even being advertised this week in many supermarkets. Today we want to sound the alarm.”

Last month Greenpeace research on sustainable seafood policies showed Dirk van den Broek, C1000 and Troefmarkt to have the worst performances. Dutch supermarkets in general perform much worse than their English counterparts. Albert Heijn, Sligro and Super de Boer have recently started improving the sustainability of their range, but not one supermarket has a completely sustainable seafood policy.

All over the world Greenpeace draws people’s attention to the problems that the oceans and the life forms that live in them have to cope with. In the Netherlands Greenpeace volunteers will stand in front of their local supermarkets with a giant ‘guppy’ and a bicycle cart this autumn.  

Today in Tiel Greenpeace volunteers were waiting for the supermarket professionals with six mobile billboards. From Tiel the supermarket professionals will leave in six touring cars, each one of which will be followed by Greenpeace. Every touring car will visit three or four supermarkets, including: Albert Heijn XL in Rotterdam, Hoogvliet Den Haag; Albert Heijn in Oegstgeest, C1000 in Leusden, Spar Express in Utrecht, DekaMarkt in Hoorn and Jumbo in Rotterdam.