Greenpeace was founded in Canada on the 15^th of September 1971. Their first protest action was against the American nuclear testing, conducted on the Aleutian Island Amchitka, close to the Canadian coast. Their first action in Germany was at the estuary mouth of the River Weser at Nordenham, on the 13^th of October in 1980. The environmental activist protested against the dilute acid dumping by the company Kronos Titan, into the North Sea. The German Greenpeace office was founded 1980 in Hamburg. Today every sixth sustaining member speaks German: Greenpeace has about 3 Million members worldwide, 562 056 of them are German (2009). Worldwide, Greenpeace runs 42 offices with 1200 employees. A little more than one-sixth works at the German headquarters.

In the moment, Greenpeace is concerned with environmental topics such as Energy, Climate, nuclear phase-out, forest, oceans, gene technology, agriculture, chemistry and globalisation. The development of solution orientated, sustainable products and projects are also a substantial part of their work. This includes the CFC- and FC-free refrigerator Greenfreeze, SmILE, the concept of a car with very low fuel consumption and the project Greenpeace Energy, an association that guarantees clean power.

Greenpeace is financed exclusively through donations. They do not accept sponsoring money from the industry or money from the state. In that way they can guarantee being independent of the states, the governments and the industry. The donations are used for environmental actions. It pays the scientific research (e.g. studies, lab tests), protest actions, research as well as the public relations and the information material for the public. Furthermore, the money is used to support and supervise the donors, the volunteers as well as the children and youth projects. Greenpeace German also covers most of the cost for worldwide campaigns, in order to enable environmental protection in poorer countries.