Barbie and Ken break up. She's dumped over rainforest
issues...
Well if this doesn’t make a fine girl’s girls sag — a real
letdown.
Ken — many Kens — gathered in downtown Los Angeles to
collectively break up with the iconic Mattel doll, Barbie. Seems
Ken’s got standards and Barbie is not living up to them. The
break-up has nothing to do with beauty, or brains (or lack of
brains) or Barbie spending too much time surfing and being a
veterinarian with a realistic figure instead of pulling off her
clothes and laying, stiff-legged on top of an also naked Ken.
No! Ken’s mad because Barbie is killing Indonesian
Rainforest.
Greenpeace has told the media that it has found evidence Barbie
doll packaging is made from materials harvested from Indonesian
rainforests. So the group organized a protest of Barbie with
supporters dressed as Ken dolls rallying around Mattel headquarters
in LA. They also managed to gain access to the skyscraper where
Mattel is housed, where a sign asking Barbie for a break-up was
unfurled.
The bright pink sign featuring a smiling doll said: “Barbie,
it’s over. I don’t date girls that are into deforestation.”
According to Reuters, Greenpeace says it has forensic
evidence linking Barbie doll packaging to the threatened
rainforests of Indonesia. The activist group said it can also
link other companies to the forest’s destruction, including
Disney.
The packaging was produced by Asia Pulp and Paper, who deny they
have done anything not in accordance with laws there and
internationally. They also say Greenpeace is preying on the
emotions of parents and kids.
Indonesia and its rainforest are seen as key players in the
fight against global warming and is under international pressure to
stop destroying forest and carbon-rich peatlands, according to
Reuters. Indonesia declared a long list of exemptions to its
moratorium on logging recently, including APP. Last year, a retail
giant in France stopped buying from APP, citing concerns over
environmental destruction and global warming.
I would not have known about Mattel’s possible link to bad
packaging practices had it not been for this Greenpeace stunt,
though I worry things like this put more people off to Greenpeace
than to Mattel or Disney or other large corporations who don’t use
their buying power to promote sustainable solutions rather than
old, destructive ways of doing things.
Still, I’m not a big buyer of Barbie products but we get them as
presents and they come with a ton of packaging that goes right in
the trash, which is what I hate. Now, I think I might hate it even
more. We’re cutting down rainforest that could help reverse global
warming trends just so half-way across the world I can throw
something away? No thanks!
Barbie, don’t come crying to me about your break-up!
What about you? Hate packaging? Hate Greenpeace? Wish you had
easy toy purchase choices that don’t include trade-offs like
throwing out Indonesian rainforest?
