Sierra Club Bleaches Dissent on Clorox Deal

Submitted by Diane Farsetta on

bleachIn an unprecedented move by one of the Big Green environmental groups, the "Sierra Club's national board voted March 25 to remove the leaders of the Club's 35,000-member Florida chapter, and to suspend the Chapter for four years." What did the chapter do? According to Peter Montague, it was "highly critical of the national board's decision in mid-December 2007 to allow The Clorox Company to use the Sierra's Club's name and logo to market a new line of non-chlorinated cleaning products called 'Green Works.' In return, Clorox Company will pay Sierra Club an undisclosed fee, based partly on product sales." Sierra members outside of Florida are also concerned. "The Club's Corporate Relations Committee examined the proposed deal with Clorox and rejected it, but was overridden by the national board," writes Montague. Grassroots members have pointed out that "Clorox was fined $95,000 for violating U.S. pesticide laws" even as it was negotiating the Sierra Club deal. The Sierra Club told chapter leaders not to "seek public media coverage of this internal board decision," reports the Palm Beach Post. Some leaders said "they fear punishment from the national organization" if they speak out.

Main Source: 
Rachel's Democracy & Health News, March 27, 2008
Topics: 
Activism
Cause-Related Marketing
Third Party Technique
Corporations
Environment
Health
Secrecy

Comments

Diane Farsetta replied on

OK, not quite, but, according to the [http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120666813235770629.html Wall Street Journal] (sub req'd):

The company known for its cleaning products has put out its first album. "The Blue Sky Project: A Clorox Charity Collection" has seven songs, five of which were created for the company's TV advertising campaign. ...

Clorox started airing the TV spots as part of a new campaign in 2005, in an effort to position itself as a health and wellness brand. With little mention of the name of the company, the ads featured images like a young girl pretending to be a mermaid or a young boy imagining himself as a pirate. Both of the kids are standing in pristine bathrooms that were apparently cleaned with Clorox products. ...

Tarang Amin, Clorox's vice president of global franchise, said the campaign, including the music, has helped sales of Clorox brand products triple since the campaign started in 2005.

Pani113 replied on

Cleaning your toilet with Clorex makes you thin and prevents wrinkles too!

As far as the Sierra Club, that is very very sad. I wonder if demon spawned corporate moles have infiltrated all major nonprofits to neutralize them, or if most people just can't say no to making a buck!

twitter replied on

The official explanationand denial reads like a smear job of the Florida chapter and an advertisement for Clorox. Without some details and references to the "internal disagreement" we can't draw a complete picture and might as well conclude that Florida had been censored for "saying negative things about companies" or some other nonsense. Information is better than accusations.

Google turns up:

and more articles. The more you look into this, the more what the National people did stinks.