COLES funding COAL

This just goes to show, that we, as the consumer are more often than not kept in the dark about where our money goes. You wouldn’t think that by buying clothes at Target or by popping to your local Bunnings hardware store or grabbing some veggies from the supermarket that you were supporting coal mining, would you?

This week we found out that Coles, one of our main suppliers for the food for our tours, is part of a corporation that invests in Coal mining. Shocking right? As much as we’d all like to buy our food from farmers markets, and local shops, not all of us have the money or time to do this every week. Here at Drop Bear we were appalled to find out that we had been buying from Coles for the past few years, only to discover that they are part of something we all strongly disagree with.

Coles is owned by Wesfarmers, one of Australia’s largest private sectors and Wesfarmers also owns coal mines, one of the world’s leading industries that is affecting our planet today. Wesfarmers also owns Target, Kmart, Bunnings Warehouse, Officeworks, Liquor Land & Homebase. Now, we’re not sure about you, but this was a big shock to us Bears because we had no idea that by popping to our local Bunnings or Target and spending money in there meant that we were putting money in to the back pockets of the coal mining industry.

The Drop Bear team are super conscious of their impact on the environment and are always looking for new ways to be more environmentally friendly. With 150 hungry guests to feed a week, it’s safe to say that we buy A LOT of food. Now you already know that we are desperately trying to reduce our plastic consumption as well as be more mindful with what we buy and how much we buy. But now, after finding out something so big, we are starting a new project here at Drop Bear HQ. It’s so important to us to buy from ethical companies that have the same passion for helping our environment as we do. We are now going to be looking at everywhere we buy things from, whether it’s for our tours, our HQ or ourselves, there will be much more thinking about WHERE we buy from just as much as WHAT we buy.

With the news about Coles, immediately we swapped to Woolworths, which although they invest in Pubs & Pokey Machines, we also enjoy a pint or two down the pub so didn’t feel as bad for supporting this industry. This was an immediate swap that Mumma & Poppa Bear both agreed needed to happen and so we are proud to say that although it might costs us a bit more sometimes, we no longer associate ourselves with Coles Supermarket.

We will also be taking a look at our current suppliers and the bigger companies behind the picture to see if where we are spending our money is where we want it to go. Any company that doesn’t have the same ethical approach will be dropped and we will aim to find companies that are into a cleaner, greener planet. We understand this may be tough, more expensive and not as easy, but as a company and as a team of planet loving bears, it’s the right thing to do.

We hope you support us in this movement and shop at IGA’s or Woolworths during your travels around Australia and ALWAYS take a reusable bag ?

Thank you x