“Greenwash Gold” – medals awarded to worst Olympic sponsors: Rio Tinto, BP, Dow

August 9, 2012. Source: UK Tar Sands Network

OVERWHELMING POLICE RESPONSE TO CUSTARD POURING – ACTIVISTS RECRUIT THE BARD TO FIGHT CORPORATE CAPTURE

1. BP’s greenwash awarded silver

The results for the Greenwash Gold 2012 campaign – the public vote for the worst Olympic sponsor – were finally announced on Friday, in front of the Olympic clock in Trafalgar Square. BP came in second, Dow third, and Rio Tinto first. For good measure all three received gold medals, presented by a giant-headed ‘Sebastian Coe’. The award ceremony featured a ‘representative’ from each company having slimy green custard poured over their heads to recognise and reward their greenwash – in BP’s case for its decision to enter the tar sands and its refusal to compensate victims of the Gulf of Mexico disaster; Rio Tinto, which is sourcing metal for the Olympic medals, has been responsible for deadly air pollution in Utah and is poisoning precious water sources in Mongolia; Dow Chemical owns Union Carbide, the company responsible for killing 25,000 people in the Bhopal gas disaster in 1984, for which it is dodging criminal charges.

But the ceremony descended into chaos after the custard had been poured, when 25 police officers appeared and arrested the three ‘executives’, and several others who were cleaning up the few drops of custard that had landed on the ground. Jess and six others spent the rest of Friday in custardy in a bizarre end to an otherwise non-confrontational campaign!

The Guardian reported on the protest, the film is up here, and more information is available on the Greenwash Gold website.

2. No more o’this, BP, no more

BP sponsorship remained front and centre of our agenda as we joined with the Reclaim Shakespeare Company on Sunday to banish BP from the British Museum. Taking place inside the BP-sponsored Shakespeare: Staging the World exhibition, the performance continued the call of the previous four performances in asking the culture world to sever its ties with the oil company. In a performance based loosely on Macbeth, three ‘BP executives’ lured a museum director under their spell and enticed him with money and oil before an angry ‘customer’ interrupted and ousted the BP executives by ripping the logo out of his programme. The performance was interrupted by real security guards who did indeed help eject the BP executives from the building!

The film is up here. See the Democracy Now coverage here.