Tag Archives: greenwashing

A Coalition to End Plastic Waste

Image

1

“Making Sustainable Change is a collaborative effort of America’s Plastic Makers® and partners seeking to end plastic waste. Because plastic is essential to creating a lower-carbon future, building our nation’s essential infrastructure and strengthening our domestic supply chains, we are taking action to prevent it from going to waste.”

Making Sustainable Change is a creation of the American Chemistry Council’s Plastics Division and its members. These members include some of the largest plastic manufactures in America.

The vision this coalition of corporations has for a sustainable future involving plastics is: “We’re working for a more sustainable future by investing in solutions that can reduce plastic waste while lowering carbon emissions throughout the plastics lifecycle. And our actions toward a low-carbon future go hand in hand with our goal of protecting the environment — we’ve set a goal of making 100% of plastic packaging used in the U.S. recyclable or recoverable by 2030, and eliminating plastic packaging waste by 2040.”

This vision emphasizes the desire to expand recycling capabilities and reduce plastic waste. However, I think it is important to realize what they mean by “reducing waste.” I believe what they suggest is to try rerouting plastic destined for landfills back towards manufactures to be incorporated into new plastic. It is a vision of a circular plastic lifecycle. However, it appears they want the volume of plastic being consumed to remain constant or increase. They make no mention of reducing the amount of plastic being consumed. Further, their advocacy of recycling is in contrast towards organizations that show current recycling approaches to be an ineffective way to reuse plastic. The plastic soup foundation states, “The problem with recycling plastic is that it doesn’t really happen. For example, plastic litter is not separated during collection in The Netherlands. It can’t be used to make the same products again; for example, food packaging that is recycled cannot be used again as food packaging.” You can’t rely on recycling to create a circular economy if the plastic cannot be reused to create the same product again.

“By changing our approach to how we make, use and recapture plastic while emphasizing the value and versatility of a material that enables us to do more with less, we can create a lower-carbon and lower-emission future.”

When reading about this organization, you encounter repeated use of “we.” This implies an extended manufacturing responsibility for plastic. However, their advocacy for recycling shows an extended consumer responsibility for plastic waste. These companies don’t appear to want responsibility for their plastic after it leaves their manufacturing plants.  There is no mention of the environmental externalities of plastic and how they could address them. There is no solution presented for addressing the current plastic in the environment. There is nothing that shows that these companies want to take responsibility for the full lifecycle of their product. Which is needed for a circular plastic lifecycle to exist. The messaging of the organization doesn’t match its actions. I can’t see any meaningful desire to address the plastic problem in the short term from this organization.

 

What About Green?

Posted on by
1

Seventh generation is a green company that focuses on being eco-friendly especially with its packaging as well as using recycled materials and plant-based products. Their goal is “to transform the world into a healthy, sustainable & equitable place for the next seven generations.” Seventh Generation is all about being 100% biobased and is aiming to be a zero-waste company by 2025.

Seventh Generation logo and symbol, meaning, history, PNG

They also focus on environmental advocacy by supporting other green companies like Sierra Club(an environmental initiative that gets cities to commit to 100% clean renewable energy) Seventh Generation offers grants to many nonprofit organizations, while they also offer help to indigenous-led nonprofits for the environment and social welfare of people. They operate on a large scale and do the absolute most to reach out as far and realistically as possible to cover all the bases of being a clean company. Their website is very open and honest about its efforts to create a better environment and what extra involvements they have with third-party associations. They also have all of their products listed as well as what is contained in them and how the packaging is made and what it’s made from. On the website, it seems very open and honest with its consumers and gives off the appearance of being an ecofriendly marketplace for sustainability. They have their mission, values, activism, blogs, products, and community all highlighted and easy to find so consumers have a better time finding them and doing their own research. All Products | Seventh Generation

I would say there is little to no element of greenwashing because all of what they are saying and doing is true to their statements and they are not making any of their products or advocacy up/exaggerated. They seem very truthful when it comes to how their products are made and the steps they are taking in order to stay true to being sustainable. This is pulled from their 2020 impact report about a goal they had met for that year z In 2020, 97% of product packaging, by volume, was what we considered to be ‘Zero Waste’ — reusable, recyclable or biodegradable” they also state in the same report that As our business grew so did our greenhouse gas emissions and our total plastics use”. The last quote can go to show that although they are doing good things they still fell short on some of the other goals they have in place, thus keeping true to their transparency agreement.

“We have been humbled by what 2020 has taught us, and we emerge with a strengthened commitment to make meaningful progress for future generations. I encourage you to join us in, and hold us accountable for, ensuring that we do our part for a more equitable and sustainable climate future.”

The effects ts that have come from this company have largely affected many people and have helped get our plant closer to being green again. Their efforts have influenced many people to turn to their products as well as chose other green organizations. hopefully, one day soon, every company will be doing as much as Seventh Generation to make our early shine bright again!

Patagonia Green Efforts

Posted on by
3

Patagonia, a designer outdoor clothing cooperation, is one company in the United States that is actively working toward a greener future. Starting with an entire section on their website detailing their specific efforts toward green activism and informational infographics that detail the production line of textiles from start to finish, Patagonia has dedicated an entire section of its department to sustainable movement. They have created different programs, volunteer efforts, donation events, and more sustainable, concious efforts towards a greener future.

Patagonia’s company has reported that this season “87% of [their] line uses recycled materials” This practices encourages reducing plastic waste as well as reusing it, as well as avoids uses of fossil fuels to decrease climate change effects. Overall Patagonia’s activism section on their website encourages to keep yourself concisous when it comes to buying new clothes and textiles, and cut down on our societies desire of consumption. By encouraging the reduction of consumption of clothing items, Patagonia puts out the message that they would rather have quality over quanitiy and reduce the waste that goes directly into our enviroment. They have documented on their website all the materials put into their products, which feautre plasitic textiles such as wool and nylon, but as well as recycled versions of the materials as well.

A report and study by McKinsey & Company is placed on Patagonia’s website that showed “consumers buy 60% more items of clothing and keep them for half as long as they did 15 years ago”, and with clothing contributing to “10% of pollution as a whole” apperael companies need to start understanding their overall effect on climate change and plastic/textile pollution.

The Patagonia company has not only priotized green effrots as far as their prodcution line goes, but details on their website the exploration of the entire footprint their clothing brand creates. I think this is valuable as, although they are a major company, they are transparent and clear with their consumers of the lifespan and impact their products have on the enviroment. Patagonia has not only built a company of informative and responsible understanding of their enviroemtnal impact, but has created several programs to establish real, active efforts to improve their company’s carbon and sustainablity footpring. One program is the “Materail Traceablity Program” which strives to establish the traceability of all their materials in the supply chain and work towards only using “enviromentally sustainable materials available”. Patagonia has also created a “self-imposed Earth tax” which will put forth 1% for the planet and support different enviormental non-profits.

Although many companies use words such as “sustainable”, “green” and “conscious”, its apparent that sometimes large cooperations will market to the consumer what they want to hear, only to continue to practice unethical and polluting methods behind closed doors. I think Patagonia is one of the few major apperael companies that not only is conscious of their specific effects on the environment and informative, yet calls other companies out on their uses of ‘Greenwashing’ on their main infographic under activism.

Patagonia’s company I beleive is one of the few major companies that is truly transparent with their production line to understand the types of wastes and pollution that they may put forth in the enviorment. I think as our enviorment declines and our plastic pollution rates get higher, its these major companies responsibles to figure out the most effective way to reuse, recycle, and overall destory their plastic pollution all together.

Cigarette Butts and the Impact on the Mediterranean Environment

Posted on by
1

The Mediterranean Sea is a beautiful water body located in the heart of the Mediterranean basin and is virtually completely surrounded by land mass. This sea plays a vital role in not only the environmental and geographical aspect of the Mediterranean however also the economical. Tourists travel from all across the globe to visit the stunning environment that the Mediterranean basin has to offer. In 2019 the Mediterranean saw roughly 304 million arrivals from countries outside of the Mediterranean basin. With tourism rates this high there are bound to be multiple negative environmental impacts in the region.

I grew up on a small island roughly 120 miles east from the coast of Barcelona – in the heart of the Mediterranean sea, where tourism accounts for more than 75% of the total economic output. I was truly able to witness first hand the damages we as a human species do to this planet for the benefit of an economy. 

This beautiful island naturally became a tourist hotspot for many people in European countries. As they can get on a 2hr plane ride, live in paradise for a week or two, and then return to their home country with no regard for their ecological footprint. 

As a resident of the island and a lover of the sea I took it as my responsibility to volunteer for multiple beach clean ups. During these beach clean ups it would be a team of as many people as we could gather, and we would work in groups of 5-6 zoning off specific areas of the beach where different teams would work at collecting all types of plastic. The plastic was then given to another group which would audit what different types of plastic were collected and categorized into groups for proper recycling.

 When I participated in these clean ups, I noticed that the most common pollutant I would see were plastic cigarette butts. These butts may be tiny and go unnoticed in the sand however they contain hundreds of toxic chemicals and are primarily made of cellulose acetate, a man-made plastic material. The cellulose acetate acts as a filter for nicotine, multiple heavy metals such as but not exclusively, lead, mercury and nickel and many toxins, including formaldehyde, hydrogen cyanide and ammonia. So when a person smokes a cigarette they are trapping these toxins in the filter and then throwing them to sit there and leach into the sand or water, causing detrimental damage to the environment and animal populations. 

Finding out these impacts that the cigarette tips had on the ecosystem I questioned why there were so many of them and why so many ended up on our beaches and in our water rather than in the garbage. From a National Geographic study an estimated third of all cigarettes make it to the trash, that means 2 out of 3 cigarettes get flicked away. I then found that on a global scale an estimated 1.69 billion pounds of cigarette filters wound up as toxic waste in our environment. To put this into comparison I calculated how many lbs of plastic straws were thrown away in a year and it is astonishing how much greater the amount of cigarette butt waste is. A rough 160 million lbs of plastic straws are thrown away each year this does not even contribute ⅕ of the amount of cigarette waste in a year. So why are we constantly told to avoid plastic straws but no action has been taken to reduce the amount of cigarette waste? I believe that there are bigger elements at work here, greenwashing the population for their own companies’ financial benefit.