Dole & Chiquita Embroiled in Escalating Tar Sands Controversy

ForestEthics Runs USA Today Ads, Organizes 'Banana' Protests in Multiple Cities Days Before D.C. Protests Over Pipeline Decision

SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 17, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Dole and Chiquita were greeted this morning with full-page ads in USA Today calling on the companies to reject extreme fossil fuels from Canada's Tar Sands and to embrace cleaner transportation fuel options.

View the ads here: http://forestethics.org/dole--chiquita-embroiled-in-escalating-tar-sands-controversy-

To sell more than 27 billion bananas a year – and to make up nearly 60% of the U.S. banana market – Dole and Chiquita consume prodigious amounts of diesel fuel for shipping and refrigeration. ForestEthics has asked both companies to reject transportation fuel that comes from Tar Sands refineries because of the impacts on communities, forests, water, and climate.

20 major companies have already taken supply chain action to reduce their use of extreme fuels like those from Tar Sands.

"U.S. companies are fueling the problem of Canada's Tar Sands, and diesel guzzlers like Dole and Chiquita are among the top bananas," said Aaron Sanger of ForestEthics. "Either company could easily avoid extreme fuels like those from Canada's Tar Sands, and that's what we're asking them to do."

In addition to ForestEthics' ads, activists in Chicago, Los Angeles, and Portland will set up "banana stands" this week offering chocolate-covered bananas and educating communities about the connection between Dole & Chiquita's transportation footprint and the disaster unfolding in the Tar Sands.

These actions come just days before separate protests in Washington, D.C. to oppose federal approval of the Keystone XL pipeline that would carry Tar Sands sludge from Alberta to Texas.

Canada's Tar Sands is home to the one of the most resource-intensive oil extraction processes in history. U.S. communities are being exposed to health problems that come with increasing U.S. dependence on Tar Sands for transportation fuel. U.S. refineries processing Tar Sands spew more toxic pollution than refineries that do not use Tar Sands. The health effects of refining Tar Sands are already evident in Alberta where downwind and downstream communities have levels of cancer more than 400 times the normal rates.

Extracting Tar Sands threatens an area of Boreal Forest the size of Maine, sacrificing the long-term value of these forests for the quick burning of oil. 90% of the water consumed in Tar Sands mining ends up in the world's largest lakes of toxic waste.

SOURCE ForestEthics