Surprising, no… unfortunate, yes. We’ve been warning for months that Greenpeace was prepared to move from activism to vandalism in an effort to gain media attention for its failed retailer rankings campaign and today it has.

This morning 8 grocery stores in Toronto found themselves festooned with “crime scene” tape and posters that attacked their sustainability practices because they refused to abide by Greenpeace’s arbitrary demands to remove certain fish from sale.

Greenpeace’s frustration with the lack of both media coverage and retailer response to its flawed campaign is evident and is now manifesting itself in juvenile actions that marginalize Greenpeace even further and serve only to isolate it from the very establishments it claims an interest in influencing.

The idealistic recruits who disrupt and deface Canadian grocery stores are either largely unaware or uninterested in the fact that Greenpeace signed an Accountability Charter that promises its agents will not be involved in “illegal or unethical practices.”

In the U.S. we know Greenpeace is retooling its retailer rankings and preparing to take credit for retail sustainability programs it had nothing to do with. This is a common tactic used by Greenpeace that has turned former activists against it, accusing the group of “capitalizing… on claiming the accomplishments of others as their own while creating photo opportunities for fundraising.”