Lush is campaigning to stop Canada’s tar sands landing in Europe.
The shopping street where your local Lush store is located will be turned upside down this Wednesday when an employee of the brand is smeared with “petroleum” while draped in a Canadian flag. This striking (and sticky) protest marks the launch of the European campaign against destructive tar sands from Canada, which could land in Europe if oil companies and the Canadian government have their way. The week-long campaign will kick off in stores in 21 countries across Europe:
Date: June 15, 2011
Time: 12:00 noon sharp to take photos of the oil spill
Location: Boutique LUSH PARIS ST-ANTOINE, 50 rue du Fbg St Antoine, 75012 PARIS (www.lush.fr)
Why is a soap store making a big deal about Canadian tar sands oil?
The oil sands have been dubbed by some “the most environmentally destructive project on earth”. With oil in short supply around the world, the oil industry is turning to increasingly dangerous and destructive methods to get oil from the ground. Canada sits on the world’s second largest oil reserve after Saudi Arabia, but this is no ordinary oil. Canadian oil comes in the form of tar sands, which are a mixture of sand, clay and a tar-like substance called bitumen, found beneath the ancient boreal forest in Alberta. Oil sands extraction requires that the forest be cut down, the land mined via open-pit mines, and the dirt sent in trucks to processing plants where the earth is boiled in fresh water to separate the oil. The end result is a moonscape where trees once stood, and poisoned water where aboriginal communities used to fish.
To stop tar sands oil at the border, Lush is mobilizing the public to push European politicians to
ban tar sands fuel within the EU under hotly debated legislation, the Fuel Quality Directive. Because tar sands fuel is three to five times more carbon-intensive than conventional oil extraction, it threatens to destroy the EU’s carbon reduction targets if widely used.
For the campaign, Lush invented a limited-edition shower gel called ”Aigre douche” after seeing campaigners cover themselves in sticky molasses (which looks a lot like oil) at an anti-tar sands demonstration in London.
Aigre douche is packed with mineral-rich molasses, and all profits from the sale of this product (excluding VAT) will be donated to the Indigenous Environmental Network, which campaigns against the tar sands. The IEN works closely with Canada’s First Nations communities, which have been hardest hit by oil sands expansion projects. These projects poison water, hunt wildlife and violate the treaty rights of First Nations.
Lush’s head of campaigns says: “Our dependence on oil has led us to desperate measures. When it comes to the tar sands, we’re literally scraping the bottom of the barrel, and that oil is making its way to Europe if we don’t stop it. The tar sands are killing people, animals and the planet, and we’ve had enough. Let’s draw a line in the sand, leave this oil out of our country and turn to clean, renewable energy instead.”
Clayton Thomas Mueller of the Indigenous Environmental Network says: “Europe leads the world when it comes to environmental legislation. The Fuel Quality Directive, if passed in its original form, will send a strong message to Canada: dirty tar sands fuel will not be able to pass itself off as environmentally friendly. As First Nations and Native American peoples resist the tar sands in North America, Europe can support them in their fight by firmly opposing this devastating fuel.”
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