Tell Dole and Chiquita: No Tar Sands Bananas!
- by: ForestEthics Advocacy
- recipient: Fernando Aguirre of Chiquita and David Delorenzo of the Dole Food Company
Bananas taste great, but a typical Chiquita or Dole banana travels 3,000 miles before you buy it -- and fuel for that long journey comes partly from Tar Sands refineries. With Dole and Chiquita producing half of the world's bananas, they've got a lot of bananas traveling a lot of miles with dirty Tar Sands fuel.
Canada's Tar Sands threatens the health of U.S. communities where the biggest, dirtiest and most dangerous refineries turn Tar Sands into transportation fuel, a process that involves excessive toxic water and air pollution -- and forest destruction. This industry has plans that would permanently harm one of the world's largest intact forests -- the Boreal. Every banana delivered with Tar Sands fuel is a dirty and dangerous step backwards from the clean energy future Americans want.
Tell Dole and Chiquita that we want no part of Canada's Tar Sands and the threat it poses to our forests, clean water and health.
Dear Mr. Aguirre and Mr. Delorenzo,
I like bananas, but I don't like Canada's toxic Tar Sands -- a source for Dole and Chiquita's transportation fuel that kills forests, pollutes our air and water, threatens our health, and contributes to climate change.
[Your comments will be inserted here.]
Canada's Tar Sands threatens the health of several US communities where the biggest, dirtiest, and most dangerous refineries in the country turn Tar Sands into transportation fuel, a process that involves excessive toxic water and air pollution. Canada's Tar Sands industry has plans that would permanently harm one of the world's largest intact forests -- the Boreal -- in an area the size of Maine. Already, operations in the Tar Sands have produced the world's largest 'open pit' toxic lakes -- now covering an area larger than Washington DC. This extreme energy consumes more water than six million people use in a year. In the Canadian province of Alberta where the Tar Sands are located, there are elevated levels of cancer among communities living downwind and downstream. Fuels from the Tar Sands also generate more climate change pollution than fuels from conventional oil, over the course of their life cycle.
Many other companies have already rejected Tar Sands fuel, and your company can be a leader, too. I request that the executives at the highest levels of your company make a public commitment to work with ForestEthics and address the problem of Canada's Tar Sands in the fuel that brings your company's products to market.
