Who's the ding dong now, Avon? (Avon & Canada Oil sands)

Looking good is what Avon is all about, so it's not surprising that a cosmetics giant with annual revenues of $10 billion is concerned about its image. That, after all, is the motive behind Avon's boycott of fuel derived from Alberta's oil sands -- looking good. Never mind that oil banned from Alberta -- the most regulated and transparently sourced oil on the planet -- will have to be replaced by oil from some despotic regime but, hey, maybe you can put lipstick on a pig.

"Avon recognizes its responsibility to the environment and the world's forests," said Tod Abreast, Avon's vice-president of sustainability and corporate responsibility. Gosh, you'd think that Avon CEO Andrea Jung is sitting around in her high heels, jumbo pearls and scarlet lipstick singing Kumbaya as she pulls down her $9 million pay package,

Avon, along with retailer LUSH and Canadian trucking company Concord Transportation, are the latest to join San Francisco-based Forest Ethics' misguided boycott of oilsandsderived fuel. "Canada's tarsands are an unethical source of fuel for shipping LUSH products," explained Shama Alexander, LUSH's environmental officer. If Alexander really wants to talk ethics, we recommend the book Ethical Oil -- the Case for Canada's Oilsands, by Ezra Levant.

Big Beauty taking on Big Oil is a delicious thing to watch. Avon, one of several companies accused of "pinkwashing" by Stacy Malkan in her book Not Just a Pretty Face: The Ugly Side of the Beauty Industry, has more than 5.5 million independent sales representatives driving around ( "Ding, dong. Avon calling!").

We wonder how they feel about the counter-boycott of Avon Products being urged by the Alberta Enterprise Group, just in time for Christmas.

My wife is also in Avon. We live in Calgary, so this would affect her business if people boycott.

I don’t know what’s true but I do know she got an email from Avon saying that there’s no boycott against the oil sands and saying it was the media who had spun it that way or some such thing.

With my complete lack of trust in the media, and having skimmed the email from Avon, I’m willing to cut the company some slack until I learn more. After all, it isn’t as if the media would lie, is it? (Do I need a sarc tag?)

cheers
Jim

http://forestethics.org/major-companies-act-to-clean-up-their-transportation-footprints

Walgreens1 has clearly decided to eliminate Canada’s Tar Sands from its transportation footprint.
Whole Foods2 has committed to the elimination where possible of its use of fuels produced by refineries that use feedstock from Canada’s Tar Sands.

Actions by Gap Inc.3, Levi Strauss & Co.4, Timberland5 and FedEx6 are not specifically focused on Canada’s Tar Sands, but they are relevant because fuels from Tar Sands are higher in carbon and other environmental and social impacts than conventional fuels. And each of these companies has said, in its own way, that it wants to reduce the environmental and social impacts of transporting products.
Bed Bath & Beyond7 asked all transportation providers to avoid fuels that would counter Bed Bath & Beyond’s goal of reducing its carbon emissions.

Avon has asked its transportation providers to avoid high impact fuels such as those from the Tar Sands.

LUSH Fresh Handmade Cosmetics8 has required its transportation providers to avoid fuel from US refineries connected to Canada’s Tar Sands.9
The City of Bellingham10 (one of two US gateway cities for Canada’s Tar Sands) also has a goal of reducing environmental and social impacts – including carbon emissions – so it adopted new guidelines that require minimizing its fuel purchasing from refineries taking feed stock from Canada’s Tar Sands.

We look forward to speaking with more companies and cities about their consumption of high impact fuels such as those from Canada’s Tar Sands. We are confident that more big buyers of transporation services and fuel – in their own way – will follow the leadership examples of Walgreens, Whole Foods, Gap Inc., Levi Strauss & Co., Timberland, Bed Bath & Beyond, FedEx, Avon, LUSH Fresh Handmade Cosmetics, and the City of Bellingham

To the Avon pinheads, RE: oil. look up the word "fungible".

They are worse pinheads than one would suppose. The end product of petroleum refining is coke; a marketable product with many uses. Petroleum coke is 99% pure carbon! So the 'higher levels of carbon' in the Alberta tar sands produces more coke; so what! It is cheaper than and generally safer than coal!

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Petroleum coke and the coal industry:

Petroleum coke has made significant inroads into the steam coal industry over the last few years and will continue to do so for a variety of reasons. Chief among them is that petcoke can serve as an excellent, inexpensive product to blend with coal in traditional coal fired boilers, and, in some newer boilers, can even replace coal entirely .

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Petroleum Coke Glossary

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Interesting article about a PETCOKE fired 600MW generating plant.

"...The key design strategy for Madison Unit 3 was fuel flexibility; the plant was not to be forever dependent on a single fuel, as with past plant designs. A fuel sourcing study found that petroleum coke, a solid residue by-product of the crude oil refining processes, is abundant and readily available in the Gulf Coast region, so it became the chosen fuel because of its quality, relative inexpensiveness, and plentiful supply.

Petcoke may be literally the “the bottom of the barrel” of the refining process, but it is a residue that is high in carbon content and low in hydrogen. Also, petcoke is almost free of ash—a definite advantage over western coals and lignite, which can contain more than 12% ash...."

Cleco’s Madison Unit 3 Uses CFB Technology to Burn Petcoke and Balance the Fleet’s Fuel Portfolio

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So these morons are wringing their hands and whining about NOTHING! The carbon is removed during the refining process and put to other uses. Duh!

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