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Giving power to the people
Level 1 |
Elementary
2
E
thiopia is a very poor country. It
owes millions of dollars and many
people there are dying of hunger.
Recently the multi-national company
Nestle asked Ethiopia to pay back $6
million dollars. This made a lot of people
very angry. Some shoppers decided not
to buy their usual KitKat chocolate bars
or Perrier mineral water, both products
made by Nestle. In other words, they
decided to boycott Nestle products.
Boycotts have been very successful in
the past. In June 1995 Greenpeace
asked people to boycott Shell because
Shell wanted to dump an old oil
platform in the Atlantic Ocean. As a
result of this boycott, sales of Shell
products fell by 70% in some countries.
A few days later Shell changed its
decision to dump the oil platform.
During the 1980s, many people were
angry about the apartheid government
in South Africa. After a boycott by
Britain’s National Union of Students a
lot of students moved their bank
accounts from Barclays Bank to other
banks. People were also asked not to
buy South African oranges or South
African wine and this boycott caused a
lot of problems for the South African
economy.
British comedian and activist Mark
Thomas has made two television
programmes about Nestle. He says that
boycotts must have a clear aim and they
must also be morally correct. “Each
person has to feel that if they do not
buy something they will make a
difference”, he says. “Boycotts can
make companies really angry. You can
boycott all kinds of products and this
can give the company a negative
image.”
Scott Clouder, research manager of
Ethical Consumer magazine says that
boycotts are not always the best
solution. “Groups campaigning against
sweatshops, for example, do not ask
people to boycott companies like Gap or
Nike. They prefer to ask the companies
to improve conditions for their workers.
If you boycott their products, the
companies will close the factories and
the workers will lose their jobs”.
Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth
organised the Stop Esso campaign. This
began because people were angry when
President Bush did not sign the Kyoto
Agreement. Many people thought that
Esso was the most active anti-Kyoto
company. Sales of Esso petrol fell by 7%
in Britain as a result of the Stop Esso
campaign and 47% of people said they
were in favour of the boycott.
