Event Calls Out Company for Connections to Climate Crisis, Deforestation, and Human Rights Abuses
**High-res photo and video available upon request
Cincinnati, OH – This morning, concerned local Cincinnati residents and a team of climate justice advocates delivered an urgent message at the headquarters of Procter & Gamble in Cincinnati, Ohio.
The activists erected large aerial tri-pods with a banner reading “From Indonesia to the Boreal, P&G Destroying Lives for Profit” strung between them, while another group deployed a 70-foot wide banner reading “Code Red!” across lanes of morning traffic. Four advocates were arrested outside the headquarters of the billion-dollar multinational consumer goods company.
The American company, the maker of popular brands of toilet paper, household cleaning supplies, and personal care items, has been linked to deforestation in the Boreal forest of Canada as well as tropical rainforests in Indonesia, both of which are critical to lessen the global impacts of climate change. The company is linked to suppliers that are charged with ongoing human rights violations in Canada and Indonesia as well.
“The impacted communities, who have been working to keep their own forests standing for decades, have called on us all to step up and be bold in the face of climate chaos. I am here today, as a Cincinnati resident, because it’s important to me to be in solidarity with impacted communities and demand that P&G respect rights and end deforestation,” said concerned Cinncinati resident Jen Mendoza.
“We are here today, representing forests and people across the world, to demand that P& G stop flushing away our future,” said Maggie Martin, a senior forest campaigner with Rainforest Action Network (RAN). “P&G must cut ties with its suppliers who are cutting down the Boreal and Indonesia’s rainforests and it must ensure that no part of its business violates Indigenous land rights or harms Human Rights Defenders.”
The advocates are demanding that P&G cut ties with one notoriously bad company in particular; P&G is connected through its supply chain to the Indonesian Royal Golden Eagle Group, which has been clearing native rainforest in the critical Leuser Ecosystem and remains in a long-standing conflict with local communities over the theft of their land for its operations.