Take Action: Tell Rakuten to end elephant ivory sales!
Internet retail giant Rakuten was selling both elephant and whale products – but recently committed to terminating all whale product sales! Great news for whales, but Rakuten is still carrying ads for elephant ivory products, many originating from illegal ivory poached in Afrtica. We still need your help to stop Rakuten's ivory sales and help the elephants!
Our new report Blood e-Commerce: Rakuten’s profits from the slaughter of elephants and whales – released by the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) in conjunction with Humane Society International (HSI) on March 18th – revealed that the company’s Japanese website carries more than 28,000 ads for elephant ivory products.
Here are a few ways you can play a vital role in telling Rakuten and its co-founder/CEO Hiroshi Mikitani that profiting from the slaughter of elephants is unacceptable:
1.Sign a petition created by our campaign partner, Humane Society International, telling Rakuten to stop these deadly sales.
2.Share our campaign film.
EIA has produced this short campaign film in the style of Rakuten’s own ‘We R …’ commercial to raise awareness of its sales of elephant and whale products.
3.Share our campaign poster EIA has produced this poster in the style of Rakuten’s own advertising to spread awareness of the company’s elephant ivory sales.
Click on it to be taken to a downloadable, hi-res version. Please share widely!
4.Send a Tweet If you are a Twitter user, send a Tweet to Rakuten calling on it to ban all sales of elephant ivory products. You can compose your own, or use the sample Tweets below.
• To Rakuten.com’s official Twitter account: @rakutenshopping: Please stop selling #elephant #ivory http://ow.ly/uEOpu #NoRakutenBloodMoney
• To Rakuten Japan: @RakutenJP: Please stop selling #elephant #ivory http://ow.ly/uEOpu #NoRakutenBloodMoney
• To Rakuten CEO Hiroshi Mikitani’s English language account: @hmikitani_e: Please stop selling #elephant #ivory http://ow.ly/uEOpu #NoRakutenBloodMoney
You can also follow EIA’s Twitter accounts (US - @EIAEnvironment; UK - @EIAinvestigator) and reTweet our messages about this issue.
5.Post a comment of protest on Rakuten’s Facebook page
If you use Facebook, you can find Rakuten’s main pages at https://www.facebook.com/Rakuten
Visit this page and post a message to register your protest!
Please circulate this alert to everybody you know and encourage them to help – the more people who protest to Rakuten, the more the company is likely to respond in a positive and responsible way.
Thank you for your help and action!