“What we demand from others is also the way we need to live our own lives”

“Greenpeace has almost 50 years of experience in these activ­ities, and we sense the trust people have in our competence.”

Menn knows what she’s talking about. Apart from a four-year stint in the world of development assistance, this holder of a doctorate in marine biology has devoted her professional life to the protection of the environment, quite a few of those years as a Greenpeace campaign leader and, “natur­ally”, as an activist.

She really gets going when the discussion turns to actual campaigns: “I’ve been on many a ship, and hundreds of images are etched in my brain.” For example, that of several enormously long fishing nets as they were pulled to the surface, crammed with fish, eyes turned outwards in panic – or in which hung corals that had grown for 150 years only now to meet an abrupt end. Even today, in times of Internet visual overload, Iris Menn continues to believe in the power of such emotional images. “A starved polar bear or an oil catastrophe in the Antarctic –­ that still has an impact, but unfortunately not as long as it used to.” The half-life of these “mind bombs” that Greenpeace has used to denounce environmental wrongdoings ever since the 1970s and which repeatedly sensitised the global populace to green issues, is waning noticeably.

Nevertheless, Iris Menn remains the optimist, as she resolutely points out. Of course, there are other sources, but she draws the lion’s share of her strength from nature, where she spends as much time as possible swimming, hiking or cycling. “In spite of all the deplorable things going on in the world, there’s also the other side of life: for example, when you stand at the bow of a ship and 50 dolphins criss-cross right in front of your nose or leap joyfully port and starboard, then you know precisely: “This is right what I do.”

Ever since her youngest years, Menn has been committed to nature. Raised in a village in Hesse, she spent most of her childhood outdoors. At the tender age of 13 –­ a time when the Green Party in Germany had just gained seats in the Bundestag – she donated her first pocket money to Greenpeace. Their actions greatly impressed her. The early campaigns of this NGO, founded in 1971, were directed against nuclear weapons testing and whaling. Later, topics such as global warming, deforestation, atomic energy and genetic engineering were added to its causes célèbres.

“You have to deal with the matter; there’s no way to avoid it.”

Iris Menn’s sense of responsibility, an urge to get involved, grew rapidly. “I bought a T-shirt from the ‘Nuclear Free Seas’ campaign. It didn’t make me exactly hip at school, but to my way of thinking it was also a kind of youthful rebellion.” In our interview, the otherwise calm, serious tone with which Iris Menn talked about Greenpeace’s visions and goals gave way to a smile about this particular recollection. As a young biology student at the rather left-leaning University of Marburg, she and her comrades allegedly sat “day and night” in front of the local armoury and protested against the Vietnam War. She chuckles briefly. Apparently, notwithstanding the seriousness of the matter, it must have been a hell of a lot of fun. Menn spent many subsequent years as a Greenpeace activist, often on the high seas. She organised and risked her neck in actions that at times were reckless, but always non-violent – an integral element of Greenpeace’s credo and mission.

With this derring-do behind her, Iris Menn has been spending much more of her time this past year in the open-plan office of the Swiss Greenpeace headquarters situated in the building of the Kalkbreite Cooperative. Nobody has a fixed workstation here, not even the boss. Office paraphernalia are stored in boxes equipped with carrying straps and placed at the entryway when work is done. There’s no room in them for a lot of paper. But then again, what for?

Networking and information gathering – two of the most important ingredients of a campaign – are anyway conducted on the Internet. This is what Iris Menn admires about the new generation of Green troopers. “They’re crazy fast once they’ve come to a decision; they play the keyboard like Mozart, search for information on the Web and organise themselves deftly. That wasn’t feasible in the older days.”

What’s stayed the same, though: the claim to one’s own credibility. It’s the cornerstone of the trust that members have in Greenpeace. “Of course, people keep a very sharp eye on us – and rightly so. What we demand from others is also the way we need to live our own lives. And if we make mistakes, we have to fess up to them.”

Finding trustworthy “green” companies has become quite a complex undertaking these days. Many corporations “greenwash” themselves and wear the “sustainability” pin on their lapels, even though they fail to meet the standards. It’s also easy to lose purview over the purported quality seals. So what does Iris Menn advise consumers to do? “You have to deal with the matter; there’s no way to avoid it,” she admits. “But you should set priorities and not necessarily want every criterion fulfilled by everything, only to end up doing without everything.” Even simple things like choosing food circumspectly can achieve a lot.

“If you buy bio, local and seasonal products – hopefully unpacked – then you’ve already made an important step in the right direction.”

So does she actually have trust in mankind that we can still get climate change under control? “Yes, but we need prohibitions and legal regulations to alter the course of things,” Iris Menn is convinced: “We can’t
do this on a voluntary basis alone, like many politicians and companies still believe.”

The task is Herculean, and time is of the essence – and there’s precious little of that for coffee breaks.