Green and gay:
Steve Smith

Steve Smith, media officer, Greenpeace USA

Operating out of Greenpeace USA's Washington, D.C., office, Steve Smith, along with out San Francisco-based colleague Krikor Didonian, spearheaded the U.S. leg of Defending Our Oceans, a 14-month expedition around the globe to highlight various threats facing the world's oceans. Smith, 27, has brought media attention to everything from illegal Japanese whaling and Suez Canal oil spills to pollution in ordinary people's homes. While exploring the trash vortex between Hawaii and California, Smith reports finding "a toothbrush, melted plastic bits, crates, bits of rope, and bottles--all pulled out of a remote area of the Pacific. If people knew that their household items would end up out here, poisoning the small sea creatures...I wonder if they would throw them away." As for avoiding this result, Smith points out, "The solutions to the problem of plastics in the ocean can really be quite simple: something as easy as using a reusable bag."

Smith felt the call to Greenpeace as a young boy and has tirelessly led campaigns across international borders through a no-holds-barred attitude, having been arrested many times. In 2002, protesting Exxon Mobil's refusal to acknowledge the global warming crisis, Smith spent 12 hours chained to a gas pump while wearing a tiger suit [Exxon's iconic mascot] in Luxembourg. "Just yesterday I picked up Le Quotidien [a French-language Senegalese paper] and saw myself in full color, and full tiger suit, emblazoned across the front page."