One of the protest posters installed at a Paris bus stop
Photo: Brandalism and RAP
Guerrilla artists have plastered Paris and five other French cities with posters criticising car giant Toyota—a major sponsor of the Olympic and Paralympic Games—by accusing the mega carmaker of “greenwashing”. The cheeky posters, which popped up on the eve of the world’s most important sporting event, were installed at over 100 bus stops in Paris, Lille, Lyon, Saint-Étienne, Strasbourg and Rennes earlier this week by Paris-based Résistance à l’Agression Publicitaire and the UK Brandalism collective.
One of the works, by the US artist Michelle Tylicki, shows a gold medal with the Toyota logo on it, dripping in oil. “The Olympics need to drop polluting sponsors,” says Tylicki on Instagram. Toyota says in a lengthy online statement that “sustainability is a significant part of Toyota’s commitment to building a better world, underlined by its Environmental Challenge 2050, in which the company aims to achieve carbon neutrality at a global level by 2050, and in Europe by 2040" (we also asked them to respond). Toyota’s official vehicle of the Games is the hydrogen-fuelled Mirai which will ferry athletes around (so you know). Let the Games begin!
