Greenpeace has applied its tired formula to many companies in disparate industries. Last week we profiled the experience of Apple and the consumer electronics industry. This week we present the sportswear industry and Nike. In July 2011, Greenpeace launched a fundraising campaign targeting Nike and its manufacturing processes. Despite Nike’s attempts at cooperation Greenpeace launched a second round of attacks in 2012.

Why do companies cooperate with Greenpeace?  The same reason why individual donors get roped in to giving them money: they want to believe Greenpeace acts in good faith for the good of the planet. But Greenpeace only cares about the sustainability of Greenpeace. And just as individuals come to regret giving Greenpeace access to their wallets, so too do corporations regret letting activists through their front doors.  Once in, they never leave.  And appeasement only intensifies their attention.

Many conscientious companies in different industries have fallen prey to the Greenpeace cycle of abuse, a three-step process by which Greenpeace raises money.

• Step One: The cycle begins when Greenpeace targets a high-profile company or brand.  “This company is destroying the rainforest, or the ocean, or the planet itself,” they will claim. They’ll photograph the Greenpeace blimp flying over the corporate headquarters. Activists wearing plushy costumes will coach people on the street to make harassing phone calls.  And they’ll misuse trademarked images  — often in a violent context.

• Step Two: The targeted company invites Greenpeace to discuss their grievance in the hope that their disagreement is just a misunderstanding.  After all, dialogue is how reasonable parties resolve their differences.  But Greenpeace isn’t interested in conflict resolution.  Conflict is how they make money.  They’ll accept the invitation and quickly wear out their welcome.

• Step Three: With some evidence of cooperation, Greenpeace declares victory and uses the triumph to solicit donations from its mailing list of supporters and in advertising campaigns that hijack the target company’s carefully cultivated reputation.

This cycle turns out to be endless because Greenpeace will never stop pestering the target company even well after the business has yielded to the activists’ demands.  The demands simply get more demanding and the cycle resumes with a new attack.

We’ve created a series of graphics that show how this cycle has ensnared some of the most savvy and successful companies.  Greenpeace, for example, attacked Apple, in 2006 on claims the company refuted. Greenpeace then took credit for the company’s own “Greener Apple” initiative that Steve Jobs launched in 2007.  Posed as an activist win, Greenpeace used Apple’s initiative to raise money for its own organization. Greenpeace has not left Apple alone and has in fact stepped up the pressure in recent months with amorphous and baseless complaints that amount to nothing more than attempted extortion.

1) Attack, 2) cooperate, 3) declare victory and raise money . . . REPEAT. That’s the Greenpeace Cycle of Abuse.

Greenpeace released its contrived ranking of seafood retailers, called “Carting Away the Oceans VI,” in the first week of May 2012.

The non-scientific report was based on a flawed survey with predetermined results. And the media knows it. One of the pressure group’s most potent threats is that it can use its influence with the media to generate news coverage at will.

But how real is that threat? This infographic compares how little media interest the CATO VI received especially when compared to the human interest story that was fascinating the US public that week.

Greenpeace says “globally tuna populations are in trouble,” and insists that tuna is being pushed “to the brink of extinction.” That’s not true. When you go to the grocery store, canned tuna is always easy to find, and there’s plenty of it available at an affordable price. That’s because virtually all of the nation’s canned tuna supply comes from species that are plentiful.

That conclusion is the consensus of global marine fisheries scientists. One of those scientists, Professor Ray Hilborn of the University of Washington, says that there are almost as many tuna in the world’s oceans as there were 60 years ago. Light tuna, known as skipjack tuna, makes up 70% of the canned tuna eaten in the U.S. All skipjack stocks around the world are healthy and abundant.

In 2007 alone, Greenpeace’s ocean fleet belched out as much carbon dioxide as the emissions created in powering Greenpeace’s offices worldwide for nearly a century. And now it’s promoting pole and line-caught tuna, a practice that would force tuna fleets to use more fuel and generate additional carbon emissions.

The USDA’s new nutrition guidelines state unequivocally that Americans need to eat more fish. But if Greenpeace has its way, there won’t be enough canned tuna to go around.They want tuna companies to fish with poles and lines, a method that only produced 4 million cases last year. Meanwhile, Americans ate 50 million cases of canned tuna.

Greenpeace is a $300 million-a-year international fundraising giant. It needs to raise over $700,000 per day just to keep the lights on, but somehow still found $32 million to spend on a new boat complete with a helipad.