Wallet Mouth

Half-baked idea; call me when it’s done

More than one person has pointed me to this BoingBoing post about Actics, the self-described “ethical community for companies and individuals” that provides “a new way to live your ethical values through feedback,” so I perused the site with interest. It’s a concept with potential, but it needs work.

Granted, Actics is still in beta, but basically all you can do right now is read members’ takes on concepts like environmentalism, integrity, and charity (ho-hum statements like “Walk whenever possible,” “Pursue what matters in a meaningful way,” and “Enjoy helping others”), as well as how they support those values through their actions. You can also check out how people are rated by others in the community. Everyone starts with a neutral 50 percent; members can rate one another to nudge that number up or down, and can also give feedback on how to be more ethical.

What’s not clear to me is why Actics throws people and companies together in the same pot of stew. I’m far more interested in reading (and potentially generating) feedback and ratings on companies than individuals. And so far there are a lot more people than businesses on Actics. Then again, I suppose there’s value in knowing something about the folks who are rating and giving feedback to companies. But Actics should emphasize the people-vs.-business differentiation on its front page.

Another improvement would be the ability to search companies by business type. That way, someone looking for, say, an ethical graphic design firm could find some options and read about each one’s values to see who fits the bill.

Another question I have is whether Actics is preaching to the choir; after all, any company that joins must already think of itself as ethical to some extent. What about all the others outside the fold? Will Actics membership—and the potential to be highly rated on the network—become enough of a competitive differentiator that it will motivate less enlightened businesses to clean up their act and join?

I hope the answer is yes.

The corporate-organic family tree

Thanks to Johanna for alerting me to this one...

Curious if that organic product on your shelf is owned by a mega-corporation or an independent business? Check out Dr. Phil Howard’s web page, which has a number of enlightening charts showing who owns whom. Howard, of Michigan State University, is doing some interesting work on the relationships between people, food, and agricultural systems.

Make sure to hit the “more graphics” link to see visual representations of brand acquisitions and introductions by the top 25 food processors in North America, as well as a chart of major independent organic companies and their brands. (I was happy to see that the owner of Panda Puffs, an embarrassing breakfast-cereal addiction of mine, is on that last one.)

 

What’s really scary about Halloween

Pumpkins are sprouting up on front steps, and synthetic spiderwebs are spreading throughout windows and doorways in my neighborhood. In a week, trick-or-treaters will blanket the area to collect all manner of sugary confections. But just as Halloween has a dark side (from its origins in warding off evil spirits to such present-day irritants as oversexualized kids’ costumes), so do all those sweets.

Top candy manufacturers such as Hershey’s, Mars, and Nestlé—the makers of most of the treats that will fill those bags on All Hallow’s Eve—have long been criticized for sourcing their cocoa from West African producers with unsavory labor practices. Chocolate isn’t the only culprit, of course; social and environmental injustices can lurk behind other ingredients and in other parts of the supply chain as well.

There are some signs of progress: Hershey’s and Nestlé, for example, have signed on to the International Cocoa Initiative, and Hershey’s this year worked with Verité and Business for Social Responsibility to create a code of conduct that addresses fair-labor practices as well as the environment and food safety in all its suppliers. But many conscious consumers are still understandably wary of Big Candy.

Then there’s the health aspect of the annual feeding frenzy; the statistics on childhood obesity today are nothing if not worrying.

In response, some forward-thinking people and organizations have come up with a couple of interesting twists on Halloween. Corey Colwell-Lipson, a mother who was inspired by the households in her Seattle-area neighborhood that gave out non-candy items last year, founded Green Halloween, an initiative that encourages parents hand out healthier edibles (like organic juice boxes) and keepsakes instead of confections. It also advocates for focusing more on costumes and the social aspects of the holiday than the caloric ones. (Thanks to Lonnie for turning me on to this one.)

Meanwhile, Global Exchange is publicizing reverse trick-or-treating, in which costumed kids give fair-trade sweets and informational postcards to the households they’re supposedly hitting up. I tend to share World Changing’s skepticism of just how fun this would actually be for the little tykes, but hey, it’s worth a try.

In any case, I like the fact that so many people are “thinking outside of the candy box” (to quote Green Halloween) this year. Hmm, Mr. Wallet Mouth and I have a bunch of leftover blinky dice we had made as gifts to hand out at Burning Man; perhaps those would make good treats (not for compulsive swallowers, though). At the very least, we’ll have to scare up some fair-trade chocolate.
Mmmm!

Naked lies

OK, perhaps that’s a bit hyperbolic, but that’s how I feel about Naked Juice. My annoyance can best be communicated by an email exchange I recently had with Naked’s customer service (slightly edited for length and clarity):

Hi there,

I just learned that Naked Juice was bought by PepsiCo last year. Why isn’t that fact disclosed on your packaging—or at the very least, on your website? Such opacity doesn’t jibe with your “Nothing to hide” slogan.

What gives?

The response:

Naked Juice is a proud member of the PepsiCo family—we don’t hide that fact and if you flat-out asked us if we were an independent company, we would have told you the exact same thing. When we say we have nothing to hide, we mean it.

Other than providing us with the natural advantages of being part of a larger company (more resources, including juice knowledge from the folks at Tropicana, better buying power, etc.) we still are the same ’ol Naked Juice company....

We have the same spirit and wit we’ve always had and our focus continues to be to provide the best 100% fruit smoothies available.... We’ve never felt the need to spend a lot of energy shouting about what company owns us (there have been several), as it doesn’t determine who we are or what we stand for.

We appreciate the opportunity to explain, Bronwyn. Please be assured that we haven’t changed—we’re still the same little juice company in Azusa, California. And, as we say in Azusa, remember to always drink Naked.

My reply:

Not telling = hiding. Not only are you not shouting; you’re not even whispering. You do not tell people on your packaging, and you don’t tell people on your website. How can the “Our Story” of your website be complete without a mention of this extremely important part of your company story? It’s not even in the FAQ. How are consumers supposed to know these things? Call the company 800 number before buying a bottle of juice?

Frankly, I feel lied to, and that’s reason enough for me not to buy your product, even if you do operate with the same spirit you had when you were a little business (and clearly some transparency has been lost). It’s all about disclosure....

I encourage you to tell the Naked bigwigs to change the disclosure policy. If you changed it, I would buy your delicious juice again.

Consumers care.

Amuse-bouche: walking the walk

Here’s to considering walkability when deciding where to live. Which reminds me of a study I heard about a couple months ago contending that walking contributes more to global warming than driving does. Treehugger’s EcoGeek has a nice debunking of it here.

Ethical threads turning heads

To Mr. Wallet Mouth’s general relief (if occasional chagrin), I’ve never much gone in for haute couture. That said, I do wish I could teleport to Paris for the Ethical Fashion Show, which starts today. Now in its fourth year, the conference touts itself as a “unifying event” that fosters dialogue between industry players and promotes responsible designers.

And of course, it promises to be quite a spectacle, with exhibitors bringing the latest in catwalk fare from such far-flung locales as Chile, Indonesia, and Azerbaijan.

The 100-odd participating designers were invited only after meeting demanding criteria. They must comply with International Labour Organization rules concerning wages, health care, and the right to unionize. Dyes or other fabric treatments used must not be harmful to the environment. A portion of profits must be reinvested into local communities. Working with local craftspeople and making frequent use recycled materials is encouraged. And so on.

The show also features lectures examining ethical fashion entrepreneurship, responsible fashion in education, and the market for ethical fashion.

The latter topic is the one I find most interesting. As is the case with so many “sustainable” products, ethical clothes often come with a high price tag that puts them out of reach for many consumers. Apparel that doesn’t harm people or the environment shouldn’t be a luxury, but all too often it is.

The flip side is that events like this expose more companies to the idea of ethical threads and generate ever more demand for them. This should lead to economies of scale and to wider availability of nonexploitative fashion.

But in the meantime, many of us slumming at the bottom end of the market can rest easy shopping in an already-ubiquitous low-impact way—at the local secondhand shop.

Fair play

Last month I blogged about Project Good, an upcoming collaboration between World of Good and eBay to create a large online marketplace for ethically made products. The unnamed marketplace is still in the works (it should launch before the holidays), but you can get the latest scoop on it—and do some good at the same time—by signing up for the Project Good email list. For every 20 people who sign up, Project Good will donate a fair-trade soccer ball to Better World Cup in Africa.

In other news, October is Fair Trade Month. The fourth-annual one, even! To celebrate, Trans Fair USA, the organization that certifies fair-trade products in the States, is holding a video contest. Submit five minutes or less of footage demonstrating what fair trade means to you, and you could get flown to Peru  to visit a farmers co-op (hmm, I hope they’re going to offset all those carbon emissions).

Also in conjunction with Fair Trade Month, the Fair Trade Federation is launching the Fair Trade Towns initiative, modeled after the first such movement, in the U.K. This is not a certification program: unlike a package of fair-trade coffee, a fair-trade town does not get independently audited to ensure that it follows certain standards. The Fair Trade Federation doesn’t own the term fair-trade town.

Rather, the initiative is an invitation for municipalities to declare themselves as fair-trade towns, based on guidelines laid out by the Fair Trade Federation (that don’t necessarily have to be followed). A fair-trade town should have a steering committee, for example. It should pass a resolution in support of fair-trade principles. It should also have a certain number of fair-trade products widely available, and one or more of its larger institutions (such as a hospital or house of worship) should use mainly fair-trade products.

Frankly, I’m not sure how I feel about the Fair Trade Towns program. Does it really mean that much for a city to declare itself a fair-trade town? Fair-trade products have to undergo rigorous certification programs; I fear that using the same name for a municipality—which facilitates and encompasses so many different kinds of economic forces and transactions—waters down that rigor and could potentially cause confusion. (When I first heard the term, I imagined a city where everything—all products, contracts, etc.—were fair trade.)

I suppose it raises awareness of fair-trade principles, and that’s good, but I worry that the designation implies something more concrete than it really is, a vague statement of support with little to back it up.

A tale of three failures

Recommended reading: a scary story in today’s New York Times about a hazardous home product that stayed on store shelves long after its dangers were known to the manufacturer, the retailers, and the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. The cost: two fatalities and scores of injuries.

Blowing it: Kleenex destroys virgin forests; bears outraged

Mwoumph!! Link. [paw swipe] Grrrrromph, snort! Link.

Current events

Yesterday I attended a Tom’s of Maine press briefing on the company’s new Rivers Awareness Partnership, in which it will donate $1 million over five years to two nonprofits focusing on riparian issues.

It was a small, feel-good affair that gave American Rivers and the River Network a chance to talk about their laudable work, and it let Tom Chappell, a friendly fellow who resembles a more approachable John Kerry, describe how the grant is the outgrowth of his company’s long-held commitment to social and environmental responsibility: “Better values build better value,” etc.

One reason I went to the event is that the company’s acquisition by Colgate-Palmolive in 2006 was one of the things that led me to start this blog. I’d already become interested in corporate parentage and buyouts, but when that purchase happened, it put a real bee in my bonnet—perhaps because Tom’s was the first green brand I ever encountered, thanks to a college roommate who used the toothpaste.

Why shouldn’t the label on my Cinnamint tube be required to say, “A Colgate-Palmolive brand”? It’s a disservice to consumers, who are understandably skeptical of multinational corporations, that companies are not (and are not coerced to be) completely open about such information.

This opacity is particularly irksome when it’s companies or brands that base their appeal on progressive values that fail to volunteer this information freely. Consider Odwalla, now owned by Coca-Cola: unlike Tom’s, its website contains no disclosure or acknowledgment of its acquisition—even in the homespun “Who We Are” and “History” sections.

I felt Chappell out—not about the labeling question specifically, since that was off-topic, but about the ownership issue. I asked him whether the ability to give the rivers grant came in part from being owned by Colgate-Palmolive, and what the negatives and positives of the arrangement had been so far in the context of the company’s mission.

“They respect our values,” he replied. “They’re our biggest supporters.” And no, the grant had nothing to do with the Colgate partnership, as Chappell put it—Tom’s level of charitable giving hasn’t changed. He characterized Colgate-Palmolive as having principles similar to those of his company, and added that “if we don’t bring our values to scale, we won’t succeed.”

I hadn’t done my homework on Colgate-Palmolive before the briefing, alas, but I can tell you now that the company has been criticized for its environmental reporting, its use of animal testing, and its role years ago in polluting the Chemsol Superfund site. It gets a middle-of-the-road rating of 40 from Climate Counts, which describes it as being “at an early stage of addressing climate change,” a “poor” score of 5 from Ethiscore, and a neutral-to-negative rating from Knowmore.org.

To be fair, that’s Colgate’s record, not Tom’s. The latter company has pretty unimpeachable green credentials; indeed, it has been a leader in the sustainable-business world, and it seems—so far, at least—to be operating autonomously from its corporate parent. I still use Tom’s toothpaste. But guilt by association is all it takes for some people to stop buying your product.

As my parents always told me, be careful of the company you keep.