Campus Environmentalists Join Web-Based Campaign

Harvard environmental activists have joined a web-based action campaign to encourage students not to accept jobs with companies alleged to be ecologically unsound.

The web site, Ecopledge.com, lists three companies--Coca-Cola, General Motors, and BP-Amoco--which are purported to be particularly unfriendly to ecological causes.

By asking students to not accept job offers from these corporations, Harvard activists and Ecopledge affiliates said they hope to change corporate policy toward the environment.

Harvard students, assisted by the Sierra Students Coalition, plan on information tables and phone and fax drives within the next month to promote the pledge.

"[This] is a successful way to put pressure on companies," said Benjamin A. Cowan '01, a Harvard Ecopledge coordinator.

Such a strategy is novel for green activists, who usually urge boycotts of specific products.

"It's students using the leverage of employment opportunities to make companies change their policies," said Sonia Fernandez, a student coordinator for Ecopledge at Princeton.

With students' non-employment vows, Ecopledge hopes to pressure Coca-Cola to honor its 1990 agreement to manufacture 25 percent of all plastic Coca-Cola bottles from recycled material.

BP-Amoco is being targeted for its attempt to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Ecopledge wants General Motors to exit the Global Climate Coalition, a corporation-led environmental organization.

Andrea Avolio, a Columbia University senior, said that the three companies are "green-washing the public."

"They are telling us that they are environmental and at the same time are destroying our natural resources and contributing to global climate change," she said.

Representatives from the companies were not available for comment yesterday.

Created in October 1999 at a University of Pennsylvania "Ecoconference," Ecopledge claims to have gathered between 10 and 15 thousand signatures from students who promise not to join the companies listed on the web site.

National student activist groups like Free the Planet, Green Corps, Sierra Student Coalition and the Student Environmental Action Coalition have announced their support for Ecopledge.

The campaign claimed a victory last year when Ford Motor Corp., another one of its target companies, withdrew from the Global Climate Coalition.

The website, www.dirtyjobs.org, is the temporary host for Ecopledge. Site organizers say they will soon transfer content to the Ecopledge.com URL.