Friends of the Earth (what they do and how to help)

Friends of the Earth is one of the world’s largest grassroots environmental networks, founded around 1970 to campaign for environmental and social justice. It now operates in over 70 countries and has 5000 local groups that focus on climate justice, protecting biodiversity and opposing corporate unsustainable development.

It’s actually an offshoot from the US group Sierra Club, which does good work on the other side of the pond. This is much older (founded in the late 1800s) and helped to establish many of the USA’s National Parks (including Yosemite, home to North America’s tallest waterfall and 3000-year old sequoia trees).

It’s presently suing the government, after Trump has rolled back climate regulations.

Its co-founder John Muir was actually a Scottish-born naturalist (who came from a town around 30 miles from England’s border town of Berwick-upon-Tweed), known for his beautiful phrase:

When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.

The Sierra Club was founded to protect the local Nevada mountains (before his environmental campaigning, he was a self-taught inventor who created a ‘bed-flipping machine’ and a clock that could turn pages’.

He later became a prolific writer on nature, after a tool accident temporarily blinded him, after which he studied ‘the University of the Wilderness’. In later life, he even took President Theodore Roosevelt camping in Yosemite, to influence him to expand federal conservation efforts.

Likely he would now be turning in his grave as Trump brings back coal. As his campaigns managed to retire over 380 coal-fired power plants, to promote clean energy to reduce climate change.

Back in Europe, the UK campaigners got together with others in France and Sweden to found a major organisation that now has over 2 million members and supporters worldwide.

Its main campaigns right now include:

Moving away from fossil fuels
Removing sewage in our rivers & seas
Campaigning for a fossil-free future
Hold polluting business accountable
Protecting forests and opposing legal logging in Brazil and Malaysia.
Campaigning against GMOs and for nature restoration.
Playing a role in the anti-nuclear movement
Reducing the UK’s importation of illegal mahogany wood

Previous successes of Friends of the Earth:

The closure of England’s last coal-fired power station
Winning legal action to stop planned mine in Whitehaven (Cumbria)
Stopped gas being stored in protected marine area
Won court victory to stop oil drilling in Surrey
Securing climate promises from 8 new Mayors

How to Support Friends of the Earth

Threads of the Earth is the online clothing shop, with profits supporting Friends of the Earth, which does such wonderful work to help our planet and all creatures.

It pairs with Teemill to print-on-demand illustrated t-shirts and sweatshirts, all printed on organic cotton, and sent in zero-waste packaging.

This is such an easy way to help one of England’s main environmental charities. Next time you’re stocking up on casual clothing (t-shirts, hoodies, beanies), just shop at their online stores.

Everything is organic cotton, made with green energy and sent in zero waste packaging. It’s a no-brainer!

The range is for men, women and children and is available in a wide range of lovely illustrations, to celebrate and protect our natural world.