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Paint It Green—with Recycled, Phony Rhetoric
Market researchers seem to have decided that promoting the "green" attributes of your company or products will resonate with consumers.
There was certainly an overabundance of promotions in the lead-up to Earth Day this year. And, in terms of marketing, Earth Day alone is not enough. We now celebrate "Earth Week!"
You might think that a big-box retailer, calling itself "sustainable," or "green," hawking consumer goods that are mostly imported from distant third world nations, would be an oxymoron. But the folks at the Target Corporation, and other sophisticated merchants, apparently don't think so.
What really stuck in my craw was Target's Sunday advertising supplement, tooting their green horn, citing such arcane facts as, "Did you know that Target offers a gift card made from 40% recycled materials?"
It also included a promotion for their Archer Farms organic milk, at about $.50 less per carton than name-brand organic milk at other grocery stores, natural food cooperatives or Whole Foods.
Organic milk is green. Well, real organic milk, that is.
Target purchases their "organic" milk from a corporation, Aurora Dairy, that owns five giant factory farms milking upwards of 20,000 cows. Packaged in a single processing plant in Colorado, it is then shipped, burning fossil fuels, to every state in this country-seriously undercutting the livelihoods of real, local and sustainable organic family farmers.
The United States Department of Agriculture, in investigating a legal complaint against Aurora, found that the corporation was in "willful" violation of federal law and that they fraudulently sold milk labeled as organic. Aurora was confining their cattle to giant feedlots, instead of grazing as the law requires, and had brought in thousands of conventional animals, illegally, among 12 other violations of law.
The Bush administration overruled career civil servants at the USDA, who recommended banning Aurora from future involvement in the organic industry. Instead, consumers around the country-consumers who are really "green"-have filed a total of 19 separate class-action, consumer fraud lawsuits against Aurora and their customers like Target, Wal-Mart, Costco and Safeway-all companies that are apparently proud of their "green" practices.
In response to the USDA findings, and in spite of the lawsuits, Target has arrogantly continued to sell milk manufactured by Aurora and to tout its social responsibility. I just view this as the height of hypocrisy.
So it is up to us as consumers to support merchants who are truly concerned with our communities and environment, and to avoid the fast talking flimflam outfits hoping to capitalize on our growing interest in taking responsibility for our impact on the Earth through the products we purchase. A ranking of all organic milk brands is available at: www.cornucopia.org
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19 Comments so far
Show AllHow about a commitment to buy nothing from big box stores on Earth Day? And now that I think of it, everyday...
Didn't Dubya convince you that real patriots go shopping ?
Ther is already an official buy-nothing day - at big boxes or anywhere else.
It is the day after US-Thanksgiving Day.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buy_Nothing_Day
Please give a prize to Chemlawn for changing their corporate name to "Trugreen". They sell you a toxic rug. If you have a cat, tell the cat to wash its paws in the sink, not with its tongue, for three whole days after any pesticide application.
Unless your cat can mutate quickly, you will probably be getting a new cat soon.
Most of this is hyperbole in any case.
If you are looking for a job, you should retrain as a greenwash consultant. There is obviously no shortage of demand for people who can make anything and everything look green.
This is not the half of it either. In the local 'Peace' group here in Colo Springs, the local staffies of the 'Peace and Justice' church funded groups have actually 'dialogued' with Pentagon propaganda spokespeople in their own little 'Peace' office about Green Pentagon blah, blah, blah.
Yes, that's right! The Pentagon claims to be 'Green' and many of the most milquetoast 'Greenies' get hauled along into the funnel cloud of Pentagon pushing the idea to the general public about how 'Green' our boys in uniform are!
They love talking it up about carbon and wind and 'new' technologies, and blah, blah, blah. The corporate press laps it right up, too. But it really stinks when minimum wage office 'Peace' workers tag along beside! That's when it's all really... Recycled, Phony Rhetoric. 'Peace' rhetoric included.
Just like the nuclear power industry alleges that nuclear power is green.
It is greener than many of the alternatvies.
Even several worst-case nuclear accidents happening at once wouldn't lead to human extinction. In fact, only a small peortion of the earth's population would be affected in any significant way - mostly just statistically higher cancer rates.
A worst case runaway global warmiming scenario would lead to human extinction.
This $green$ really makes me see red.
Greenwashing is the operative word.
I recently stopped consuming all mucus producing dairy and switched to rice milk for my cereal.
Of course, you should also avoid the greenwashed, anti-union, anti EFCA, overpriced, (and dreadfully yuppie) Whole Foods stores like the plague.
I prefer to call that store "Whole Paycheck".
Never trust the cheery little slogans and come-ons with which the corporate US is so in love.
Never has so much bullshit been so widely distributed.
Ugh! Why did I even stoop so low as to use the word "corporate". It's so badly tainted now that even thinking the word makes me want to...
Disgusting.
Remember, lying to increase profits is a corporate obligation.
What many of them mean is their products create lots of GREEN $$ for THEM not u.
I would recommend not drinking cow's milk period, organic or not. It is meant for baby cows not humans! And even at the "organic" dairies, the male offspring are sent to slaughter and often confined in barbaric veal crates first.
Pot calling the kettle black? Unfounded elitism? Phony rhetoric on everyone's part here.
"Green" vs. "phony Green"; "Organic" vs. "real Organic". Big steaming load of organic fertilizer.
Organic family farming in the U.S., by the way, is not green. Not even close - requires more fossil fuel & more land mass per unit of production than conventional farming. More soil erosion than conventional no-till agriculture. Organically raised livestock emits CO2 and methane at the same daily rate as conventionally managed livestock, requires more days for same production. Inconvenient truths. Convenient high $$ niche market.
You said it..."phony rhetoric"...all of it.