Archive
Above the Law?
In No Logo, Naomi Klein argues that there is “an anticorporate attitude…emerging among many young activists.” The political movement spurs from events in which corporations try to “beat the system” and act like they are above the law. Our interest comes from recent trends to ignore environmental issues in order to maximize profits.
In 1986, an activist group called London Greenpeace created a small panel that criticized McDonald’s (found here). McDonald’s filed a libel lawsuit against Helen Steel and Dave Morris in 1990. At the time, McDonald’s had threatened to sue many organizations that criticized them, including The Guardian and the BBC. Unlike others who had apologized to McDonald’s and retracted their claims, Steel and Morris decided to stand up to McDonald’s with the help of lawyer Keir Starmer.
The two received support from the general public after the case was the subject of many journalist’s reports. The McLibel foundation formed and collected over 35,000 pounds from the public for the fees associated with the case.
Although Steel and Starmer lost their lawsuit, the judge ruled that McDonald’s used advertising to take advantage of children and should be held responsible for animal cruelty. Steel and Starmer’s lawsuit probably produced more publicity than the actual pamphlets they were distributing. Perhaps corporations will catalyze Klein’s proposed anticorporate agenda by fighting back when they should maintain their normal camouflage of ignorance.
-Mark
Br The Lies ands
A brand is an identity with which a company is able to pass over the idea or sense of a product service or business. So many take times to look at brands and be swayed by the ideals held with these brands conveyed by company owners to consumers, that they are not truly aware of what a certain brand may be conveying. In “A Web of Brands”, by Naomi Klein, an in depth analysis of billboards and logos in the “garment” district of Toronto is shown to convey the effects of brands in society. In Klein’s specific district she can see how the actual districts importance comes behind its potential to advertise brands for big companies. All consumers see are the flashy billboards and signs while right beneath them are old corroded living environments where no effort has been put forth to improve. This one idea from Klein’s work gives such an accurate description of company’s actions and how brands fit into them. Many consumers don’t know the harsh truths big name companies can cover up with these brands. The outsourcing done to cheapen the making of shoes and increase profits, the usage of child labor in third world countries the pain and suffering all wrapped nicely and neatly with a pretty swoosh or a snazzy catch phrase. Consumers need to rise up and ask why start demanding answers and realize the fronts put on by the big brand name companies society has learned to smile at.
Waste – To – Wealth
We are all familiar with plastic bottles and use them extensively for packaged drinking water, carbonated drinks and juices. However, all may not be aware that Polyethylene Terephthalate, popularly known as PET, is a non-biodegradable plastic and an environmental hazard. It is estimated that over 300,000 tonnes of PET are used and discarded every year in the city of Mumbai alone.
Mumbai has a vibrant raddi (scrap) market and any scrap that has some value is picked up by rag pickers and sold to scrap dealers who process it and sell it to companies who can use such scrap as raw material. However, till recently PET scrap was considered worthless even by rag pickers, leaving the unsightly garbage littered all over.
As the Chairman of Bisleri International, the largest corporate player in packaged drinking water industry in India, Ramesh Chauhan, felt, he had the social responsibility of removing the waste. He had to create a market with economic value for PET waste, where none existed. He explored options to recycle PET and found a plant in Japan which crushed the bottles and chopped it to flakes. He imported the machinery to chop the scrap into flakes which could then be bagged and shipped to companies , which use it to make fiber cables, pillows etc. Mr. Chauhan took the initiative to encourage rag pickers to pick up any PET bottle lying on the streets and he incentivized the rag pickers and scrap dealers by purchasing the scrap from them, before processing it and then selling it to companies.
Since then, several other companies have started buying scrap from dealers and processing it for use as raw material for other products, thereby tackling this environmental hazard.
It is important that we recognize that we need to protect the environment and should take actions to maintain sustainability of nature.
Source: Economic Times of India, Sept 03, 2010.
-Rahul
The Meat Industry
When I tell people I’m a vegetarian, they are always surprised. The responses vary from “How do you LIVE without meat?” and “Why would you ever DO such a thing?” to “I can’t believe it!”
Sometimes I simply push away these questions with sarcastic responses like “I just love animals so much”, because sometimes I don’t even understand it myself.During the Lenten season of my freshmen year of high school, I decided to give up eating meat. I never had a craving for meat, and there were very few times when my choice was inconvenient. Ironically, what I thought would be the hardest thing to go without turned out to be the easiest.
And then I met Mrs. Panik. Mrs. Panik was a “flower child” stuck in the wrong era, a fun loving hippy who loved teaching her students. She gave a lecture one day on the environmental impact of the meat industry. I was surprised to learn that the meat industry produces a large amount of greenhouse gases – up to 18% of all greenhouse emissions (This figure came from a report by the Livestock, Environment, and Development Initiative). Mrs. Panik also pointed out that producing vegetables and legumes as food was about four times more efficient than using the same resources to raise livestock for future slaughter.
I decided I really didn’t need to revert my eating tendencies after hearing Mrs. Panik’s lecture. I know that many people believe I’m foolish in my efforts to oppose the meat industry, but I hope that a combination of many small efforts will raise awareness off this issue.
-Mark
Diamonds vs H2O
In chapter four of Raj Patel’s novel the value of nothing he discusses the value between diamonds and water. In this in depth analysis Patel compares and contrasts the usefulness and worth of both items in overall society. Honesty what is seemingly a “no brainer” is a much more complex idea than most people care to notice. I mean put on a scale in a society where there is only need for the absolute bare essentials water is clearly the superior choice, fact of the matter is water is a necessity for human beings no matter where you go. In today’s society diamonds are held at a value almost quintuple the value of water. It seems that when a societies bare essential needs are met water, something absolutely necessary to the survival of a human being, is no longer and the forefront of a societies mind. This concept also ties directly into the division of labor, by which said diamond gives in worth not only money put also power and dominance financially. This diamond unlike water not only brings wealth but creates an intricate chain of jobs and standing for which labor to be divided up in the situation. To obtain the diamond there needs to be miners these miners need to know how to dig and properly recover diamonds, then there must be engineers to properly recover diamonds and cutters to cut diamonds into sellable pieces, after diamonds are cut they must then be processed, another job, then distributed and finally sold from the hands of a retailer. This generates a break down of all profits from Mr. Capitalist and keeps this chain of jobs and happy laborers paid, however small paycheck is, and wealthy Mr. Capitalist stuffed.
Sharing is Caring
“Sharing is an alternative form of distribution to commodity exchange and gift giving. Compared to these alternative modes, sharing can foster community, save resources, and create certain synergies”. This quote from the first line of “Why not share rather than own” by Russell Belk sets the tone of his literary discussion of the benefits of sharing. Belk goes into a deeper analytical discussion in which he gives a case for how sharing would be of extreme benefit in society in situations relatable today. Belk uses pollution as an example to show how if we simply shared things like transportation and gave up few luxuries in order to just get where we need to go we would be able to positively benefit our environment. Not just the environment but also the draw backs on things such as family life and society relations are being effected by our society’s lack of sharing. Within families the privatization has increased and decreased interactions between actual families, with things such as private televisions and private mp3’s family relations in this new society has dropped, Belk exclaims that the only road to improvement is to draw towards a society more based on sharing. This analysis of sharing in society can also be related to the division of labor in society. If divisions within labor societies consisted more of sharing and wealth among the consumer society was shared so that every member had the same amount then everyone in each society would be in a better happier position. Not to sound like a Marxist but this ideal of sharing has been seen before with less than positive results. Maybe sharing isn’t caring.
The Mumbai Floods
July 26, 2005 – City Mumbai, India
It started raining in the afternoon, which was normal as it was the monsoon period. However by evening several parts of the city were flooded and low lying areas submerged under water. A cloud burst had resulted in over 900 mm of rainfall in a single day, the highest ever rainfall on a single day in over a century.
Several people and animals lost their lives, houses and property damaged and the incident left an un-erasable scar in the minds of the people. While the cloud burst resulted in unusual amount of rainfall, it was the clogging of the city drains which prevented water from draining and resulted in flooding.
Only when there is a disaster of big magnitude, people wake up to the reality of how our lifestyle is impacting nature. The single largest problem identified with the flooding in Mumbai was the drains being choked with plastic bags. Plastic bags are convenient for shoppers to carry their purchases, but these bags end up as litter and can be seen thrown around all over the place as the product is not conducive to recycle. It is estimated that a plastic bag buried under ground could take as many as 1000 years to break down and in the process the small particles contaminate the soil and water. Further the production of plastic bags requires oil (which could be saved for other purposes like cooking and heating) and also causes air pollution.
So, next time you are out at a store and the clerk gives you a plastic bag to carry your purchases, refuse to accept it and instead use one of the many re-usable shopping bags that are available.
Readers – kindly leave your comments and suggestions on how to further reduce usage of plastic bags which are not biodegradable.
-Rahul
Obligatory Gift Giving
In The Gift by Mauss, he analyses societies and their rules with gift giving. Certain cultures give gifts out of obligation and will give gifts after receiving gifts out of obligation. Gift giving was very important to them and carried a lot of symbolic meanings. Families that were receiving gifts were not really getting physical items but respect from the gift givers. Certain cultures would even give “payments” to use things from the Earth itself. They felt obligated to give back to the Earth since it was giving them the gift of life and the ability to survive.
Gift Giving and Sustainability
We are living in a consumer society. We do just that, we consume. We are not known for giving gifts or being a gift giving society. We take for ourselves. Slowly but surely, our consuming habits are catching up to us. We are taking resources out of the Earth without giving it something useful back. For the most part, we lack of the feeling of obligation to give back to the Earth because we do not clearly see the consequences of our consumption. Our desire for more products masks our eyes from the need to give back. If we were from a society with a strong sense of obligatory gift giving, we may be more inclined to give back to the Earth more than we do now.
-Tami
Greenwashing
These days with the scare of global warming and environmental disasters, eco-friendly products and sustainability are being promoted throughout the market. Products are coming out with new claims of being “greener,” or friendlier to the environment, compared to their competitors. However, just because a product is “greener” doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily green.
What is Greenwashing?
Greenwashing is defined as using green marketing or half truths to make products seem like they’re environmentally friendly. Companies are very quick to pick up on the greenwashing fad due to the environmental scares. While products are being advertised as “green,” the truth is that the changes in the production or materials of the products are so slight that they are not really “green” or environmentally friendly at all. The market is taking advantage of the uninformed customer in order to make more profit by offering a “greener” product. People are led to believe that they are doing the environment good by buying their products while in reality the products are barely any different.
Greenwashing and the Consumer
What can consumers do in order to not be tricked into paying more for greenwashing?
- Don’t be fooled by the label: Just because a product says it’s green doesn’t mean it is. While some products are truly green, a lot of companies are just riding the fad in order to make an extra buck.
- Learn about your product: What materials or chemicals are involved with the production or use of your product?
- Compare products: What claims do the other company make? Is one material change going to make the whole product greener in production or use?
For more information about greenwashing and green marketing, visit:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_washing
-Tami
What We’re About
The purpose of this blog is to analyze and comment on readings and their relationship to sustainability. Since there are several aspects to sustainability, we’ve decided to focus on the effects on the natural environment products have as well as the reuse, recycling and re-purposing of products.
-Tami
Sustainability 