The 6 Most Half Assed Attempts at Corporate Green Washing
For a person, "going green" is as simple as recycling more, wasting less and always, always, always behaving like an insufferable prick in social situations. But for a corporation, "going green" can be a much harder task that costs million of dollars, thousands of hours of manpower and often painful company-wide cutbacks.
Or, they can opt to do jack shit and just spend all of their money and effort convincing the public otherwise. This is what is referred to as "greenwashing," and it works like this:
#6.
Who Needs Water When You Have Coca-Cola?
Listen: India is a beautiful, ancient place with a rich and storied culture and we don't mean to knock it, but it's pretty damned overcrowded. They're practically breathing other people right now, and as a result their resources are stretched taut. Water actually still means life over there--as opposed to the Western world where it's just something that needs to be enhanced with electrolytes or thrown on the t-shirts of girls who hate their fathers.
"WHY DIDN'T YOU DO A BETTER JOB RAISING ME, DADDY?! I mean... um... I'm all wet, teehee!"
So when Coca-Cola came to India and started sucking up thousands of gallons of the nation's precious life-sustaining water each day to make their bottled acid-baths, it kind of rubbed a few (billion) people the wrong way. So to balance out this horrible misappropriation of resources, Coke tried to prove they were environmentally conscious by setting up a donation scheme to help save polar bears... which, of course, aren't native to India.
"Save the bears, they're dy- well, OK, not this one. He's uh... he's doing pretty good."
Then at a San Francisco business conference, Coke also pledged to go water neutral. Well, actually they said they "aspire to put back" what they "take out." Aspire. You can aspire to anything; take a poll of a first grade classroom and you'll get 18 kids aspiring to be astronauts, four aspiring to be policemen, two aspiring to be president and one special child aspiring to be a motorcycle.
Wait, it gets better! Part of the their plan is that if they take all of the water out of one village's wells, they can become "neutral" by putting the water back... into a different village. You know, like how instead of paying back your loan to your bank, they'll allow you to just give the money to some random person instead. As long as you're paying somebody, right?
#5.
Wait, isn't "Green" Also a Color?
In a thousand management meetings across the globe, the same idea takes shape:
"Hmm. Environmentalism = Green. Green is a color. Let's color our products green. Holy shit! Done! That's lunch, motherfuckers. Cocaine bisque and vodka sandwiches on me!"
For sheer, clanking brass-balled initiative, we have to admire GM the most for this kind of thing. Producer of the "gets-one-mile-per-Middle-Eastern-skirmish" Hummer, GM desperately needed a way to clean up its name and get some green cred. So, did they go for fuel-efficiency? A desperately needed push to hydrogen power? At least recycled paper in their sales flyers? Nope, they just changed their logo from blue to green. That's it!
"Welp, Earth solved, gentlemen. Earth. Fucking. Solved."
Insiders said the new color was intended "in an effort to show consumers that [GM] is leaner, greener, more focused on fuel efficiency and better able to make quick decisions."
...wait, by drawing something you can make it reality?! We had no idea this Harold and the Purple Crayon-like power existed! Hold on one second!
...and you laughed at us, Mrs. Warburton! YOU LAUGHED!
#4.
Green Tongued
But it doesn't stop with just a color change on the log. Since there are no laws against outright lying about new-age bullshit buzz words, it was only a matter of time before somebody got the brilliant idea to advertise their products as "green" without having a single green feature.
For instance, it's generally agreed that cloth diapers are more eco-friendly than the disposables. So how do you make people buy the landfill crowding, disposable kind? Use fewer trees? Minimize packaging? Nah. Just color the package green and print some meaningless eco-phrases on it.
New! Gaia-conscious packaging process!
Organic cotton? Yep, it's mentioned - but how much? Is it certified? A deafening silence on that. Recycled packaging? Why yes, a full 20 percent of the packaging is from recycled materials! 20 percent! How green! A full fifth of all of their diapers are- wait, you mean just the thin packaging is 20 percent recycled? Umm, how about the actual diapers inside? Made from pulverized bald eagle genitals? That's... less friendly. That seems downright unnecessary actually.
"Oh, we'll give you something to cry about, Captain Spangle McFreedomwings."
And then there are "Earth-loving" materials companies can say they've converted to, like bamboo. Super fast growing, requiring no cultivation and can grow anywhere... hell, bamboo is the sustainable material of the future, if you believe the ads for products like bamboo clothing.
And, making clothing from bamboo would be pretty damn eco-friendly, except that most mass-market bamboo materials first have to be crushed, ground, dissolved in lye, mixed with carbon disulphide (which is a neurotoxin), then washed in battery acid and spun into fibers. So, on the downside that "natural" bamboo material you're wearing basically took a trip through the toxic waste dump.
A bomb which reduces 'noise pollution'? Really? I was given to understand that, in the modern theatre, an explosive device which can't be easily, audibly tracked is a godsend. Guess I was wrong.
ReplyLadies. Ladies, please, I just want to be very clear that throwing water on your chest while wearing a tight white t-shirt in no way indicates that you have daddy issues. It indicates that you're a cool, laid back girl who likes to cut loose and have fun.
Reply"Somewhere, Captain Planet is getting raped by an unexploded nuclear bomb, and it is still more "environmentally friendly" than that."
ReplyI think I read that fanfic.
Last year I worked a temp job for some extra cash at a warehouse that distributes garden tools. For 8 hours a day I stuffed rakes and hoes into displays for stores like Lowes and Walmart. One of the sets were these "green" tools made with "environmentally friendly, renewable bamboo" handles. Each one of these rakes, hoes and shovels came wrapped in packing paper. My fellow temps and I had to unwrap thousands of these things and all the paper went into the dumpster. God Bless America
ReplyThe kid-turning-into-a-motorbike drawing was brilliant.
ReplyI got an advertisement for eco-friendly diapers at the end of this article. Seriously.
ReplyThat's cool, I got the Human Centipede.
It reminds me of my ex's family who once castigated me for not recycling the plastic disposable plates they use every day of the year in their home!
ReplyThat must get expensive!
"all natural" is just a fancy way of saying "ZOMG this haz .5% of somthing that waz in da groundz!1!!1one"
ReplyI'm sick of buzz-words and manipulation on the products I buy. I buy them to eat it/wear it/wipe my ass with it, not be "eco-friendly"
my old mustang burns a gallon of gas and a quart of oil just from being started. it leaks brake fluid, power steering fluid, oil and freon. i thas no smog equipment. but it is Green. Calypso Bright Green Metallic to be exact.
ReplyI'm fairly certain the illustrative example about polling a first-grade classroom about their aspirations is one of my favorite quotes I've ever seen on this website. Seriously.
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesI aspired to be a dragon.
Still do, actually.
Raptor all the way
My sister wanted to be a house elephant.
I'm telling you, these ads must be able to detect irony or something, because at the bottom of number 4 I got an ad asking "Cloth or disposable diapers?"
Reply Hide All See All 5 RepliesI got one for buying "Carbin Credits" which is basically when you pay someone to say that they are being green for you! The irony of Cracked adds are delicious, usually they are based on a buzzword in the article, which usually means that they are about something the article is satiring.
*"Carbon Credits"
Stupid iPod
All I got was a condom ad.
I got a rock.
I got one for Sheepskin Boots haha
I just cracked the hell up at: You laughed mrs.Warburton! YOU LAUGHED!
ReplyI haven't read where "it's generally agreed that cloth diapers are more eco-friendly than the disposables." Actually, my reading shows that it's pretty much a toss up. Yes, the disposables have to be manufactured and used disposables take up landfill space, but don't forget the amount of water and detergents used to clean cloth diapers plus everything else that gets soiled when the cloth diapers leak through.
ReplyMy wife and I said screw it and opted for convenience with no real environmental reason one way or the other.
If this site is american how come there's an ad for the NDP? Just saying.
ReplyThe ads are not the same for every user, they seem to change with the region.
i can' seem to stop getting the human centipede 2 ad,what does that say about my region? no seriously nobody in their tright mine would want to see that movie if they saw the first one
It should be noted that huggies naturals do not have the chemicals that regular disposable diapers do. I know this because my kid is allergic to regular diaper chemicles and suffers horrid burns after twenty minutes in a standard diaper.
Reply Hide All See All 3 Repliesso he was sitting, for twenty minutes, probably in discomfort, before you noticed anything?
You're a monster.
Well, unless he/she/it checks he/she/its child's ass every five minutes, how is he/she/it supposed to know there's a problem? Even if the kid was crying, how was he/she/it supposed to know the problem was the perfectly clean diaper that was just barely put on the kid?
On the NBC thing, Conan O'Brien changed his title card from purple to green and made sure that all his guests that night had "green" somewhere in their name, like "Greenburg". They made a point out of half-assing it, and it was hilarious.
ReplyOne minor correction re: the bamboo. While it has numerous good points, it is not true that bamboo "requires no cultivation" Most bamboo grown in the world is vegitatively propigated from only a handful of orginal stocks, and is clonal. One of the things locked into the DNA of bamboo is usally when the plant will flower and set seed. This means that whne the time comes, all examples of that Bamboo line, everywhere, all flower and set seed at the same time. Once that happens the baboo usally dies (it is possible to keep it going, but it takes outside help) so every time this happens (anywhere from once every 5-6 years and every 5-6 centuries depending on the species and strain) whole groves of bamboo literaly die en masse. So the continued life of a bamboo forest that grows with absoultely know human oversight usually is rather limited. Most bamboo groves in fact descend fro intentional planting at some time in history by people (bamboo is usually a lousy competitor with trees if it has to start from seed.
ReplyI had to read the bamboo link up there, it was specifically referring to bamboo that had been converted into rayon. I have bamboo floors in my house because they look sweet, and couldn't have cracked sully my houses good name.
ReplyPoor Captain Spangle McFreedomwings ='(
Reply"For instance, it's generally agreed that cloth diapers are more eco-friendly than the disposables"
ReplyInteresting article but "general agreement" is not actually fact (usually "generally agreement" is "I think it's true and can't be bothered to actually look it up.")
There was a scientific study done YEARS ago showing that reusable diapers have the same eco-footprint as disposable. We're not talking about a reusable hand towel vs paper hand towels, we're talking about something that collects human waste, waste that can potentially carry disease. Washing cloth diapers is more than just tossing them in the machine and when you use them you also need to consider the additional stress placed on water purification.
Well, the individuals who did the study did. You just made an assumption.
Landfills are actually engineered ecosystems, designed to break down materials. The bacteria living in them is not capable of breaking down biological material. People who use cloth diapers are usual knowledgeable enough to know to flush the, ahem, organic material down the porcelain idol, into a septic system that is designed to handle and neutralize organic waste.
If you think bacteria in a landfill can't break down biological material, you're either lying to the internet or you don't know what those words mean.