Philips has received an award for its new HDTV because it’s said to be “efficient” with electricity. Yet what these industry driven awards fail to mention is that the new sets are less efficient than the ones they replace. The average power consumption of a 27″ cathode ray tube color television is still less than the celebrated “Eco TV” of Philips, which consumes 192 watts when calibrated, according to a CNET review. Far more impressive are the new displays coming to market that use less than half the power required by the Eco TV.

Home Depot plans to label products that they judge to be environmentally friendly, using the
name “Eco Option.” Yet more than 90 percent of the products in the line are already on Home Depot’s shelves.
While this is probably a step forward, the self-regulatory trajectory that this labeling is taking in the United States raises questions about accountability. The Eco Options brand will identify some productes as environmentally friendly, but no label is offered for environmentally unfriendly products. Link

Walmart announced in March 2007 that it would begin featuring flourescent light bulbs in an effort to
reduce energy consumption.

Manufacturing

Computers and cars require more fossil fuels to make than you might think. Link
Despite this situation, some companies are beginning to address the need for recycling if not reduced consumption.

Karma Offsets

Starbucks has come under fire for its exploitation of coffee growers. They’ve responded by producing a environmentalist online game. While Starbucks has many areas in which it could improve its own environmental footprint, its primary reasons for making the game could be considered sincere. As a broad policy question, however, is it not important to unite with labor rights campaigners to prevent the environment from becoming a wedge issue that gives corporations a free pass on other issues? Link

Food Fight

Not strictly greenwashing but a new low in marketing to children, nevertheless Link

Love for Sale

Meanwhile, the antidote must not be aired on MTV! What does the censorship of this type of video say about American “freedom of speech”?

http://www.spike.com/video/talking-heads-love/2788523

Does recycling really make a difference for the environment? While most people believe so, some don’t.

Con

The Utter Waste of Recycling By Alan Caruba.

Pro

Does Recyling Really Help?

Some responses from student readers.

[The latter] is a very interesting article on landfills (but long with small font so remember to exercise your eyes!) Whatever you do, DONT PRINT IT OUT! Paper is the #1 component of landfills, and no, it does not biodegrade! One study found a decade old hotdog in a landfill. Yum. Anyway, most landfills do not provide an environment where biodegrading can occur, however, this is mostly favorable since biodegrading releases toxic gases and materials. We make a lot of trash and yes, this is sad but remember to recycle your paper products and you’ll be doing a big help to decrease landfill space.
http://www.plasticsresource.com/s_plasticsresource/doc.asp?TRACKID=&DID=487&CID=175

Pro-recycling information seems vague and limited. However, those outspoken against recycling, while more specific, seem to have an agenda of their own, mainly, bashing the “left-wing greens” (YIKES! is that us?). Let’s be civilized about it! The main concern seems to be landfill space. While Mt. Trashmore isn’t my idea of a great national monument, what about all the space recycling processing plants take up? Do they smell any better? And do they save any energy?

I’m sure ideally recycling can reduce energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, but I’m not sure recycled materials offset the demand for cutting down tree or producing new materials. I have the feeling we are just consuming too much and companies will keep creating new materials so long as there is a demand. Aha! So maybe if we buy recycled materials we can make a difference.

The National Day of Action on Climate Change took place Saturday, April 14th, 2007, around the United States. Author Bill McKibben, the main organizer of the day’s approximately 1,400 separate demonstrations across the U.S., spoke at Battery Park in southern Manhattan. The crowd of 3,000-5,000 people wore blue as part of the Sea of People project to promote awareness about global warning and its effects on coastal areas. The most moving speakers were young people, however, who encouraged government representatives to act on legislation that has been introduced to cut carbon emissions by 80% before 2050.

Some ideas circulating in the crowd:

Get Inspired:http://www.thetruth.com

http://adbusters.org/home/

http://www.breathingplanet.net/whirl/

Get off the couch:1. Culture Jamming Culture Jamming combines activism with performance art, guerilla tactics of protest, ritual resistance against mass media corporate commercialism. Visit http://www.thevacuumcleaner.co.uk/whirl.html, to view videos of the ritual resistance, known as “whirlmart”. Or take advertising into your own hands by exposing the greenwasher of your choice and wheatpaste an anti-propaganda poster over or near the companies original ad.2.Buy a bullhorn3.Participate in a protest. 4.If you can’t find one, organize one.Educate the public about the issue. Write letters to newspaper editors, participate in town hall meetings. Publicize the meetings to local papers. Pick a highly visible location or centralized shopping area.

Make a difference – dailyBuy compact fluorescent light bulbs. These energy saving light bulbs are standardized to fit in regular sockets, and not only do they last longer than incandescent bulbs, they can save $30 or more in energy costs over the bulbs lifetime.If every one of 110 million American households bought just one compact fluorescent light bulb, replaced an ordinary 60-watt bulb with it, the energy saved would be enough to power a city of 1.5 million people. One bulb swapped out, enough electricity saved to power all the homes in Delaware and Rhode Island. In terms of oil not burned, or greenhouse gases not exhausted into the atmosphere, one bulb is equivalent to taking 1.3 million cars off the roads. Read this article to learn more: http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/108/open_lightbulbs.html

Various academics with elite pedigrees have argued in the journal Foreign Affairs that technological solutions like spreading reflective dust in space will be the inevitable result of the contemporary failures of governments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Almost passed over in the discussion, however, is the crucial fact that such superficial solutions would not reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, or the increasing acidification of the oceans. Consequently, we may avoid the worst of the warming, but our coral reefs will be dead, and the ecosystems we have come to rely upon will continue to fall apart.

See “The Geoengineering Option” in Foreign Affairs V.88, No. 2

There is such a machine — it’s called the ‘plant.’

This documentary directed by Deborah Koons-Garcia is a testament to how well agribusiness and biotech industry have hidden the dangers of recent trends in food technology, gene engineering, monoculture farming, and transgenic Frankenfood.

Because corporations operate globally, and abuses may happen far away, consumers are dependent on governments, the press, and watchdog organizations for critical information about environmental transgressions. Rather than fill that need, many politicians and news organizations have looked the other way. These are, after all, the same corporations making campaign contributions and buying advertising. In the case of the U.S. Public Broadcasting Service, agribusiness giant Archer-Daniels Midland has long sponsored the News Hour, while Mobil sponsored dramatic programs. As James Ledbetter explains in Made Possible By, neither corporation has come under intense scrutiny by the News Hour. ADM, facing a serious scandal in 1995, got off easy on the News-Hour: “Not until October 1996–when ADM was hit with a $100 million criminal penalty for price-fixing, seven times the amount of the next-highest such penalty–did the News Hour devote a full segment to this scofflaw corporation.” In effect, Ledbetter says, “ADM could not bribe the News-Hour into ignoring the ADM scandal altogether, but its underwriting serves to narrow and contain the parameters of discussion on public television.”

When some of the largest media corporations are owned by industrial manufacturers, and institutions sponsored by taxes have no teeth, clearly there’s a lack of oversight. Fortunately a combination of whistle-blowing and citizen zeal has brought to light many serious problems. This has created some pressure. The very existence of greenwashing is evidence that corporations recognize their vulnerability to coordinated criticism. Yet it’s also evidence that public relations projects are viewed as cheaper than redressing the wrongs that create popular unrest. G.E. was forced to disclose that it had spent $800 million to avoid dredging the Hudson River, into which it had dumped millions of pounds of PCBs.

As sources of globally accessible information have proliferated with the emergence of the World Wide Web, the situation has gotten more complicated for corporations with bad environmental “externalities” (a term from economics which describes costs shirked by the corporations, such as costs to the environment). Marketing campaigns have in some cases become stealth activities. Exxon-Mobil has been very agressive in creating front groups that express Exxon-Mobil’s opinions but with names that imply citizen action. Telecommunications giants like Verizon have done the same. During the intense 2006 campaign to denigrate “Net Neutrality” many articles sprang up to explain who was behind the various organizations that claimed to be champions freedom.

Who would suspect groups with names like “Consumers for Cable Choice”, “Freedom Works”, and “Progress and Freedom Foundation”? As it turns out, they’re all “astroturf” (false grass-roots) organizations set up to misinform the public by the telecommunications giants. Link “Hands off the Internet” sounds like activists wanting to protect the Internet. But it’s really an industry-backed organization that spent $20,000 a day on television commercials aimed at eliminating long-standing net neutrality protections so that telephone and cable companies could maximize their profits and minimize competition.

What would motivate commercial media to attack this type of activity? These front groups are a an additional source of advertising revenue! Even when the media organs aren’t directly owned by polluters (e.g. MSNBC and NBC owned by General Electric), the entanglements of overt and covert advertising are enough to prevent the media from agressive self-regulation of this type of deception.

Many companies have indeed come around, and deserve their new badge of honor. But some paint themselves green no matter how much harm they do. From Exxon to Ford, from Mobil to Monsanto, the world’s worst polluters buy fuzzy, feel-good advertising with an environmental message. Columnists and politicians who’ve pushed catastrophic policies like utility deregulation and the war in Iraq now genuflect at the media’s green altar. Without a hint of irony, some claim authorship of a movement they’ve scorned for decades. Link

http://reconstruction.eserver.org/072/roach.shtml

Roach analyzes advertising, myth, and ideology. Taking automobile advertising of the 90s as her central material, she delves into strange conquest fantasies that are being peddled by Madison Avenue. Roach addresses the negative dimension of representations of Mother Nature in several SUV ads. She also interjects the “medieval Christian scholastic concept of ‘aseity’” into her interpretation of advertising messages.

Further reading: Roach’s Mother / Nature: Popular Culture and Environmental Ethics

Perhaps the fact that it has disappeared so quickly is evidence of the vapidness of Honda’s myearthdream.com concept. Reaching out to race fans while simultaneously funding petrol wasting automobile racing must have created some cognitive dissonance even for the auto executives. But this schlock is part of what makes analyzing greenwashing interesting. A lot of people must see this stuff and thing, ‘gee, Honda cares about the environment.’

Meanwhile, despite portraying itself as a green player, Toyota has resisted efforts to increase fuel efficiency

Jeep of the Jungle

This series of advertisements treats endangered animals as fun props in the service of selling vehicles
that contribute to global warming and off-road habitat degradation. Nice job, Jeep!

Not to be outdone, General Motors has brought the distortion of nature to new lows in its own series of ads for the Hummer. These dumb “Wild” Hummer commercial beg the question, Could a company be more out of touch with the environmental impact of its products?

See video

The Model T got better gas mileage than the average Ford vehicle today.
Read more here
But that doesn’t stop Ford’s marketing crew from creating the illusion of progress, as was clear by their sponsorship of Yahoo!’s greenwashing ad-revenue portal.

• Jump Start Ford campaign