“Beau-Pal”: Accountability in a Plastic Water Bottle
I love The Yes Men, aka the globe-trotting pranksters that keep CEOs awake at night. In July, they joined Bhopal activists in holding Dow Chemicals accountable for the chemical disaster. Twenty activists showed up at the Dow headquarters near London with “B’eau-Pal” bottles that were filled with toxic water collected from the contaminated site in Bhopal. Twenty five years after the accident, the Sambhavna Trust issued a report stating that toxic quantities of nickel, chromium, mercury, lead and other toxins were still present in local groundwater, vegetables, and breast milk! The website has devastating details about the accident, and its impacts.
The prank (or maybe it was the contaminated water!) inspired so much fear in the heart of Andrew Liveris, Dow’s CEO, that he ordered the entire building vacated in anticipation of the delivery. A better reaction would have been to start taking responsbility for the accident and clean-up the mess.
