Before You Support Causes, Even Good Ones…

Posted on November 16, 2009 by zoeweil

Last weekend I participated in a breast cancer walk-a-thon. What I appreciated so much about this particular walk-a-thon was the choice of charities to which we could contribute. For years I’ve been asked to support breast cancer walks, and I always ask what organization the money is going to. Often it’s an organization that supports animal experimentation, and I choose not to donate to these, not only because I have ethical concerns about such research, but also because I don’t think it’s the best way to confront the epidemic of breast cancer. I would rather see money go towards prevention, ethical human studies, and direct help to breast cancer patients.

When I walked last weekend, I chose to have my sponsor dollars go directly to financial help (in the form of gas cards and such) to poor women in my state with breast cancer. I was delighted to be able to help in this way.

Most of us want to help others, and we are eager to join causes, especially when it’s easy to do so. If we can buy one product that contributes a portion of profits to a cause like breast cancer, many of us are inclined to choose such a product. But is this always the MOGO choice?

Here’s a sobering blog post to consider that discusses the carcinogenicity of cosmetics whose parent companies promise a portion of profits from sales for breast cancer, a disease their products may actually contribute to. Take a look and consider researching this important question (and its validity) for yourself.

When giving, as with everything else, it’s so important to make our help as aligned with our values as possible. In this way, we truly reap the joy that comes in service and ensure that we contribute as meaningfully and fully as possible.

~ Zoe Weil
Author of Most Good, Least Harm, The Power and Promise of Humane Education and Above All, Be Kind

 

Image courtesy of dbkfrog (Doug) via Creative Commons.

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Filed under: community service, consumerism, critical thinking, MOGO (Most Good), values | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Walmart’s Sustainability Label: A Chance to Show the True Price of Products

Posted on September 4, 2009 by zoeweil

In a recent WorldWatch article Ben Block writes about a new Walmart initiative to create a “sustainability label” that will be determined through extensive assessments of suppliers of products. It’s hard to to greet such news without enthusiasm. It’s also hard to not to be mighty skeptical. If ever there was a company that could make a massive difference, it would be Walmart, the biggest retailer in the world. If Walmart exercised its power to demand sustainable, humane, and peaceful products, the race would be on to produce them. A sustainability label is a great start.

But if ever there was an opportunity for greenwashing on a grand scale, it’s here, too. There will be a thousand loopholes, as one can easily see just by reading the WorldWatch article. There will be hidden costs no one reveals. There will be labels for sustainability that mask the realities of cruelty and oppression, unless those labels cover the true costs to all: the environment, other people, our own health, and animals.

Despite my skepticism, I’m happy about this development. Walmart is comprised of people who want a safe and healthy future for their children and grandchildren, just like I do. They have the ability to create changes in systems by virtue of their size and influence. I support such efforts, but I know we all need to fight for them to be honest, just, and legitimate.

~ Zoe

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Fiji Water Fad Yet Another Reason We Need Humane Education

Posted on August 26, 2009 by zoeweil

In my talks and workshops I do an activity called True Price in which we examine a product, food, or article of clothing and ask a few questions about it. The questions include:

1. Is this product a want or a need? The purpose of this question isn’t to condemn the satisfaction of our desires but to become aware of what are wants and needs so that we make choices accordingly.
2. What are the effects, both positive and negative, from production, use, and disposal of this item on ourselves, other people, animals, and the environment?
3. What systems perpetuate the existence of this item?
4. What are MOGO alternatives to this item?

During my MOGO talks, I usually bring three items: a conventional cotton T-shirt, a fast food cheeseburger (well, a plastic version that can travel!), and a Fiji brand water bottle. Often I invite the audience to vote for the item they’d like to analyze, and often they pick the Fiji water bottle. I’ve gathered some statistics on bottled water in general (and Fiji in particular) which I share, encouraging the audience to seek out the validity of these statistics on their own.

This week, Mother Jones published an article on Fiji water written by Anna Lenzer.

I’m quite critical of bottled water in general, and Fiji water (transported halfway across the globe to get to Maine, where I live) in particular, and I think that bottled water is only a MOGO choice in certain situations (e.g., when traveling overseas where local water may be contaminated, during emergencies and power outages, etc.). So I was prepared to find this article reinforcing my already formed beliefs. Yet I was surprised by how much I hadn’t known and how much worse the situation is than I’d realized, and I urge readers of this blog to read the Mother Jones article.

What shocked me most was how deeply entrenched the Fiji brand has become — how fully it has forged its celebrity status, and how easily we are all duped by greenwashing and promises of health and goodness. I remember feeling similarly when Ben and Jerry’s ice cream became a paragon of virtue simply because it was more socially responsible than other companies that were also producing frozen dessert. That an ice cream company, producing a high fat, high cholesterol, energy-intensive dessert that also contributes to animal suffering would ever receive such accolades and become the dessert of choice for every good cause and socially conscious consumer, dumbfounded me. Same with the Body Shop, which was lauded for not testing on animals and for using fair trade ingredients, while it produced more and more expensive and unnecessary personal care products (foot cream?) in small plastic containers that mostly wind up in landfills and incinerators. But I digress.

Fiji water, it seems, is the water of the stars, and the hype around it — including that buying it helps the environment — defies common sense. Meanwhile, actual Fijians don’t have access to their own aquifer that the American company uses exclusively to bottle expensive water that Fijians can’t afford. Instead, Fijians often lack clean, accessible water at all.

As always, I come back to humane education. We must raise a generation that can think. That can evaluate critically and not be so susceptible to advertising and hype. That relies on a combination of common sense, pursuit of knowledge, and an abiding value to do the most good and the least harm in relation to everyone.

I will continue to bring my Fiji water bottle to talks and schools, armed now with more information from this expose in Mother Jones, and I’ll continue to invite my audiences to become critical thinkers and creative solutionaries for a better world.

~ Zoe

Image courtesy of mariettaki via Creative Commons.

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Filed under: critical thinking, humane education, marketing, media literacy, MOGO (Most Good) | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Buy.ology: A Review

Posted on February 25, 2009 by zoeweil

I just finished reading Buy.ology: Truth and Lies about What we Buy by Martin Lindstrom. As a humane educator, one of the most important skills I hope to impart among my students is the ability to think critically and gain freedom from manipulation and brainwashing. Thus, books such as this are very useful to me and to the students in our M.Ed. and certificate programs in Humane Education and in our training workshops. Mr. Lindstrom discusses the new use of fMRI technology (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) to understand our responses to advertising and branding — which is fascinating — and I found his chapter demonstrating the similarities in brain response to beloved brands and beloved religious icons especially so.

I had hoped for more on the ethics of branding and advertising, however, especially after reading the Foreward by Paco Underhill that describes Martin Lindstrom as exuding virtue. But there’s nothing virtuous about Lindstrom’s work or his book. He consults for multinational corporations, many of which engage in egregious human rights violations, environmental destruction, animal cruelty, and pervasive manipulation solely for profit. In one story in the book, Lindstrom describes an assignment he was hired for to “brand eggs.” I had hoped, finally, to hear Mr. Lindstrom speak truthfully about some negative aspects of an industry when he writes “I found myself standing inside one of the largest egg farms in the world.” Modern egg “farms” or more honestly, factories, cram hens into cages so small they are unable to even stretch their wings, let alone walk. The conditions in modern egg factories are so cruel and unnatural that it’s no surprise that he would be hired to improve sales of these unhealthy eggs by helping “this company create the perfect yellow” egg yolk. Lindstrom writes, “For ethical reasons, I couldn’t support the idea of adding artificial coloring to the grain, so instead, I identified a vitamin mixture that could be added to the hens’ feed that would produce yolks from light yellow to middling-yellow to the passionate yellow….” It amazed me that for ethical reasons, Mr. Lindstrom couldn’t support artificial coloring, but seemed to have no ethical concerns about the conditions for the chickens. Does Mr. Lindstrom know that the male hatchlings from the supply house were likely discarded (killed) by being dumped into the trash or ground alive, or that the hens would ultimately live for a year under brutal conditions before being killed without regard to even the most basic level of humane treatment?

Mr. Lindstrom says at the end of his book that he hopes he has helped the reader to escape “all the tricks and traps that companies use to seduce us to their products and get us to buy and take back our rational minds,” but this rings false. Martin Lindstrom has built his entire career on consulting with and serving these companies so that they will be ever more effective at persuading us to buy their products.

Nonetheless, I recommend this book because in it you’ll find valuable information for resisting branding and gaining a modicum of freedom from relentless advertising.

~ Zoe

Filed under: accurate information, books, consumerism, critical thinking, media literacy | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off

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