Remember how Trader Joe’s got an F on Greenpeace’s Sustainable Seafood Guide? The bad news for the popular retailer doesn’t stop there. Apparently, scoring even lower than Target and Wal-Mart when it comes to sustainable seafood has made Trader Joe’s a target for Greenpeace’s latest campaign: Traitor Joe’s.
Greenpeace activists are protesting Trader Joe’s fishy policies both on land and line. San Francisco stores were treated to a fishy show — 2 activists dressed up as the endangered orange roughy, plus more activists in Hawaiian shirts like those worn by Trader Joe’s employees asking customers to vote for sustainable seafood.
I think the funnier part of the protest’s on Twitter though. @TraitorJoes tweets snarkily, defending his right to deplete the oceans of fish. The Traitor Joe’s spoof website welcomes visitors to its “one-stop-shop for ocean destruction”: “My favorite fish to devour are Chilean sea bass and orange roughy.”
Even before Traitor Joe’s launched, Green LA girl readers oft complained of Trader Joe’s fishy practices — the chain actually comes in dead last in Greenpeace’s rankings of any national store — which makes me think that at this point, Trader Joe’s has a simple profit motive for adopting better seafood policies. We’ll see what new fishy stories emerge as the Traitor Joe’s campaign hooks more Twitter followers –
Update, 3/29/10: No longer Traitor Joe’s: Trader Joe’s adopts sustainable seafood policies
Photos via Greenpeace
The operative word is “traitor.”
Comment by David Rice — July 6, 2009 @ 9:49 am
Great buzz for Greenpeace. It should work very well. Hope that they came do as well with the Senate on the Climate bill.
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Comment by ecogordo — July 7, 2009 @ 4:06 am
Well we’ll see what happens. I’m now officially not going to buy any seafood at Trader Joe’s until further notice. Not even canned tuna.
Comment by Siel — July 7, 2009 @ 8:55 pm
Funny how Greenpeace doesn’t focus on other retailers. I do feel that Greenpeace will get the most response from appealing to TJ’s shoppers since the chain tends to be very responsive to customer complants and requests and can change their inventory pretty quickly.
However, to say that Trader Joe’s is WORSE than any other national retailer is blatant misinformation. TJ’s simply chooses not to deal with outside groups, but Greenpeace thus assumed the “worst” and, through their report, interperted this choice as proof that their executives are hiding in some bunker plotting ways to destroy the planet.
Comment by James — July 7, 2009 @ 11:01 pm