If you've missed previous opportunities to tell Nestlé and British American Tobacco to commit to making their foreign factories safer, then the Sierra Club still helps you do that. You recall, of course, the fire that burned down the Tampaco Foils plant in Bangladesh back in early September; the fire took over a day and a half to put out and killed 39 workers, making it the worst fire at a Bangladeshi factory since the infamous Rana Plaza fire of 2013. Sadly, someone could have inspected the boiler beforehand and prevented the whole thing -- I mean, boilers don't go up just like that! The aforementioned Rana Plaza fire led to the creation of a massive compact among garment-manufacturing corporations concerning factory safety in Bangladesh, but that concern hasn't spread to other factories like Tampoco Foils, which need it just as much. Why petition Nestlé and British American Tobacco? Because they have goods made at Tampaco Foils, and they can put pressure on the factory's owners to do the right thing. They sure don't want to get hit with the Big Stick of Bad PR, after all.
Meanwhile, two multinational mining corporations want to go right up to the edge of Yellowstone National Park and mine for gold. Like we're all in Deadwood or something! Yellowstone is not only America's first national park, it's home to endangered species like lynx and grizzly bears. And mining for gold isn't even as efficient or useful as drilling for gas or oil -- to make just one gold ring, you'd have to move 20 tons of soil and rock. Think that won't destroy a lot of natural habitats, and put vulnerable populations of wildlife at risk? I wouldn't want to hear a whole lot of who-cares-it's-just-bears guff -- would we discard our values because they're-just-Bangladeshi-factory-workers, I wonder? And mining for gold isn't just a profoundly wasteful economic activity, it's a profoundly wasteful spiritual activity -- if you're the kind of person who's more impressed by a rare and shiny object than, say, the fruits of our works as a civilization, I'm not sure I'd want to know you. So PennEnvironment helps you tell the Obama Administration to stop gold mining on public lands.
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