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Environmentalists unite against underwear

FTP, EAG come together to promote environmentalism, which includes protesting Victoria’s Secret

by Brock Webb

“I told you that we would be exiting by the Cheesecake Factory, officer,” Jess Eaton ’07 calmly told mall security as she continued to march in front of the lingerie-clad protesters, circling the outside of the mall en route to group’s cars. They began to chant again, telling Des Moines mallgoers about “Victoria’s Dirty Secret.”

“Victoria’s Secret, yes you could/stop using old-growth wood,” they shouted.

After another four minutes of walking around the exterior of the Jordan Creek Town Center mall, trailed the entire way by a mall security SUV, complete with flashing yellow lights, the protesters finally made it back to their cars. The mall cops radioed in the license plates and explained the full boundary of the 24-hour ban, which included the mall, Costco, the Best Buy complex and the hotel.

The protesters were representatives of Grinnell’s environmentalist community and were taking part in a national day of protest about Victoria’s Secret’s use of old-growth forests to make their widely-distributed catalogs. Free the Planet (FTP), Grinnell’s environmental group, places an emphasis on group unity and as they were evicted from Jordan Creek, the protesters felt good about their solidarity.

Earlier this year, that unity was by no means assured. The Environmental Action Group (EAG) was faced with a predicament: their membership was dropping, either because members were graduating or would be studying abroad in the coming semesters. The recruitment fair went poorly, leaving EAG with too few members to continue. Rather than let their projects fail, EAG and FTP joined forces, uniting the campus’s environmental movement into one group.

EAG’s sudden drop in membership doesn’t seem to phase FTP. “In general, there’s been a national loss of interest in the environmental movement,” said former FTP leader Jon Henry ’07. “I think that it’s been mirrored in the student body, not that it’s any sort of problem. That’s just the way social currents go.”

FTP co-leader Allison Amphlett ’08 said that although FTP membership has dropped over the past few years, the change has not been significant. “There’s been a shift of what people want to work on environmentally from more national issues to more local and campus issues,” Amphlett said.

FTP focuses on a variety of issues, ranging from the local to the national. Because the group is so large, the members break down into small subgroups to keep their actions organized and manageable. In the past, FTP has had three major groups: Iowa Issues, Forests and Energy. Recently the Energy subgroup was closed due to lack of issues. For the last few years, the Energy subgroup had been campaigning with other groups and students for a wind turbine on campus. The success of the campaign led the administration to form a committee to research the effect a wind turbine would have on campus energy policies. More recently, Energy had focused on preventing drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, but when many Iowa representatives were named as key votes, Iowa Issues subsumed it. “The Energy subgroup just didn’t work out,” Henry said. The Energy subgroup was replaced with the absorbed EAG. Now, Forests focuses on paper issues and lumber, Iowa Issues on wider local environmental policy and EAG on town and campus environmental policies.

Despite the changes, members of FTP are optimistic about the future of environmentalism. The group is hoping to promote what Henry called an “FTP renaissance,” revitalizing the environmental movement on campus by becoming a fun and meaningful activist group. The group has plans ranging from an FTP all-campus party to converting dining hall waste into biodiesel fuel for the campus lawnmowers. Though there may be no immediate effect, Kate Morley ’08, was definitely pleased with the outcome of the Victoria’s Secret protest. “I think it was a big success ... we created a big stir,” she said. “We did a good job getting out the message. We’ll have to keep working because they’re still sending out just as many catalogs as they were last week, but it was a good start.”

Sidebar: Negligée Charges?

Lingerie chain Victoria’s Secret has found itself under attack by environmentalist groups. Here are some of the accusations they have levelled against Victoria’s Secret:

• Almost all of Victoria’s Secret’s 395 million catalogs per year are printed on virgin paper fiber

• Much of this paper comes from Canada’s massive Boreal forest, home to a number of endangered species

• Victoria’s Secret catalogs also are made from forests in the southern United States

• The many indiginous peoples in the Boreal forest are negatively affected by widespread logging there

• Victoria’s Secret, a major buyer of paper, could encourage more environmentally-friendly paper usage by corporations, and does not

—www.victoriasdirtysecret.net

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