Dogwood Alliance

This morning we held the first press conference in Louisville, Kentucky at KFC to kickoff the Southern Exposure Tour and new website about the fast food packaging campaign--www.nofreerefills.org . Louisville happens to be the hometown of Yum! Brands, parent company of Taco Bell, KFC, Long John Silvers, Pizza Hut and A&W, so it was exciting to kickoff the Southern Exposure Tour here. The Yum! companies have made the list when it come to bad packaging choices, along with McDonalds, Bojangles, Jack in the Box, Quiznos and Wendy’s.

That’s right, all of those companies are buying paper packaging from Southern forests. To take action and send a message to those companies, go to www.nofreerefills.org . The website will be fully up and running next week.

Despite the rain, we had a good time at the press conference today. We had some great speakers, including Gary Heine of Heine Brothers Coffee and Tom Windham, a local community member in Louisville.

Gary called on Yum! Brands to make simple choices like better packaging that create a more sustainable world. Gary also gave great examples of how he has made choices within his own business to promote sustainability and has even created a non-profit organization through his company called Breaking New Grounds. Heine Brothers Coffee is well known throughout the community as leader in sustainability, with several coffee shops in the Louisville area. In fact, I’m writing this from Heine Brothers now!

Tom Windham, a long time supporter of Dogwood Alliance, avid outdoorsman and local businessman also called out the fast food industry for their terrible packaging choices. “Southern forests are too important to be wasted for fast food packaging,” he said this morning. As an outdoorsman, Tom is well aware of the beauty, biodiversity and outdoor recreation Southern forests provide.

All of the speakers were apt to point out that simple choices and creative solutions can reduce excess destruction of Southern forests while still allowing the level of convenience we’ve come to expect.

I’ll post photos and video next week.

Off to Virginia!

Eva Hernandez

Organizing Director

Dogwood Alliance

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