Breast Cancer Action is the leader in calling out hypocrisy in the breast cancer industry. Our 2021 Think Before You Pink® campaign Stop Banking on Breast Cancer builds on our legacy of holding the industry accountable, as we are calling attention to Susan G. Komen® and their Pink Ribbon Banking Program, done in partnership with Bank of America.
Join us and tell Susan G. Komen® that their pink ribbon banking cards are a blatant example of pinkwashing.
The Pink Ribbon Banking Program is comprised of both a Bank of America credit and debit card. Through this program, Bank of America has pledged to donate $1.5 million to Komen between 2021 and 2023.
BCAction coined the term pinkwashing in 2002, and defined it as “a company or organization that claims to care about breast cancer by promoting a pink ribbon product, but at the same time produces manufactures and/or sells products containing chemicals that are linked to the disease.” The Pink Ribbon Banking Program = Pinkwashing!
The pink ribbon banking cards, each emblazoned with a bright pink ribbon, use the goodwill of the breast cancer community to increase Bank of America’s profits, and Bank of America in turn invests in and props up the cancer-causing fossil fuel industry.
Bank of America invested over $42.1 billion in fossil fuel projects in 2020 alone. According to the Rainforest Action Network, Bank of America was one of the top three financial institutions to fund worldwide fossil fuel expansion between 2016 and 2020. Fossil fuels increase our risk for breast cancer through harmful environmental exposures produced all along the fossil fuel continuum. Banks that invest in this outdated, profit-driven energy source are fueling the breast cancer crisis. Bank of America is not an ally; they are a part of the problem.
Worse yet are the human rights violations and environmental racism inherent to fossil fuel projects. Due to decades of racist historic and ongoing planning, zoning, and lending practices, communities of color are disproportionately exposed to high levels of air, water, and soil pollution and are hit first and worst by fossil fuels. During the construction of fossil fuel infrastructure, for example the controversial tar sands pipeline Line 3 of which Bank of America is a funder, Indigenous treaty rights are violated; water protectors are over-policed, criminalized, and subject to state-sanctioned violence; and Indigenous communities report increased rates of human trafficking and missing and murdered Indigenous women in their communities.
We will not stand by as Pink Ribbon Banking Program raises funds to support these outcomes and increase our risk for breast cancer, all while using breast cancer as a marketing ploy.
Take action with us now. Email Susan G. Komen and let them know: In order to truly address and end the breast cancer crisis, they must stop banking on breast cancer and divest from pinkwashing!