News from the front lines, literally the front lines. Supermarkets around the UK, and undoubtedly around the world seem to have forgotten how to use the off switch. Our reporter sent me the following:

“Just got back from Tesco Beaumont Leys [Leicester].  They have 51(!) checkouts, six of which were in use.  All of the other unused ones were powered, EPOS terminal, scales, laser scanner, PIN machine etc.  It’s open 24 hours a day so I can only assume that they’re all powered all the time regardless of whether they’re in use or not. Every single checkout also has a pile of their £1 ‘green bags’…”

Thanks, Ewen.

As one of the largest retailers in the world, Tesco seem to have an obligation to control their carbon emissions, but then again, as one of the largest retailers in the world, they clearly don’t have to give a stuff for carbon emissions, despoiled countryside, local shops, empty seas, destitute farmers…

The hypocrisy is in those magical green bags. Make out that you’re green and you can get away with anything. Unless of course your customers decide that using local shops, small food delivery companies and growing their own food is actually a far better way to do things.

Someone close to me was bought a t-shirt the other day. The person who bought it for her thought she was doing the right thing by buying one made from organic cotton, with a big fat “I Love Organic” printed on the front. The only problem was, that the t-shirt came from Asda, owned by WalMart, and purveyors of the cheapest supermarket clothes in the UK.

This is the company that advertise the 99p school shirt, the £2 skirt and the £15 suit. They say it’s ok because they buy cloth by the mile and pay “fair wages”. This is part of their Ethical Code:

We carry out 13,000 audits across the globe every year to make sure that the people who make clothes for us aren’t exploited in any way. With every single audit we carry out, amongst other things we check:

– That workers are paid the going rate for the country that they work in.
– That workers aren’t working too many hours.
– That working conditions are up to scratch.

Well, that’s sorted then. Bear in mind that “going rate” can mean as low as a few cents per day if that’s what the country of origin allows; that “too many hours” can mean up to 100 hours a week, if it is legal in that country; that “up to scratch” can mean something far worse than you would hope to work in, if it is legal in that country. In short, the statements aren’t worth the bytes they are written in.

I know this too, because as recently as 6 months ago, a report in The Guardian found Asda guilty of paying “wages were so low that, despite working up to 84-hour weeks, they struggled to provide for their families.” In addition, “there were also reports of physical and verbal abuse by supervisors and of workers being sacked for taking sick leave.”

So, it appears that Asda may love people wearing their heart on their sleeves, but when it comes to maintaining basic human rights – which are also a byword for environmental standards too – they most certainly keep things close to their chests.

So where shall I start with Volvo? They are advertising a range of “eco friendly” cars. The last time I had heard of an “eco friendly” car it had no engine, no wheels, no chassis – in fact it wasn’t a car at all because THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS AN ECO FRIENDLY CAR. Do you get it, Volvo? Do you get it, Ford, owners of Volvo? A car is a polluting machine, it needs fuel, and no vehicle fuel – as far as I have been able to make out – comes with no net impact on the environment.

But they persist because, of course, they want you to feel better about driving, they want you to buy cars, and they want you to drive them so they wear out, need parts, need servicing and need replacing, and so the whole cycle comes round again without anyone having learned a single lesson except that the auto makers are compulsive liars, and the car buying public seem to have bags over their heads if they are really taken in by any of this stuff.

So what of Volvo’s “Life is better lived together” campaign? The one where suitably fit, attractive looking people slide into their vehicle together to go off on some adventure. Are they saying that all these people live together and they never, ever, drive alone? Of course not. They are saying that you can have more fun in a car rather than on a coach or a train or even, God help us, using the power of our own bodies. It’s all part of the marketing machine and the car sellers love making fools out of you.

Here’s their Australian Marketing Manager, telling it like it is:

“Marketing manager Matt Braid explained the global repositioning: ‘The traditional family structure – as we all know – is changing day by day,’ he said this week. ‘We thought targeting modern families could potentially be limiting our segment. So we’ve revised our target group to ‘modern lifers’, which focuses on a consumer’s attitude to life rather than a particular life stage they’ve gone through.’ “

Go and tell Volvo, and all the other car manufacturers where to stick their lies.

So much for the Brits, WWF-USA takes the idea of corporate love-ins to a whole new level. Go to the link yourself.

GASP at the polluters who want to look green.

SWOON at the food companies who sweep things under the carpet.

Be in SHOCK AND AWE at the financiers who run the world, and pretend to save it. On the WWF corporate partners web page lies a catalogue of the biggest names in greenwash.

Let’s look…

CARGILL : The largest grain producer and exporter on Earth. Genetically modified crops…check! Deforestation…check! Large scale agribusiness…check!

COCA-COLA : Enemy of poor rural Indians and extractor of millions of gallons of much needed water every day.

ALCOA : Aluminium giant. Producer of millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide every year, and polluter of lakes and rivers throughout the world.

TOYOTA and NISSAN NORTH AMERICA : Purveyor of SUVs and 4x4s to the masses. Get ’em while they’re belching!

TATE AND LYLE : Destroyer of native habitats worldwide. They “own” around a quarter of Mauritius.

WALT DISNEY COMPANY : Brainwashing masters. Lose your childhood to a corporate myth.

And they were just the easy ones that I didn’t have to research. If WWF are really so outrageously dumb to think that any of these companies deserves to look good and, in effect, wipe out all memory of their terrible activities, then they can go ahead, but DON’T DARE THEY SAY THEY ARE AN ENVIRONMENTAL ORGANIZATION!

I’m not a fan of freesheets at the best of times: these omnipresent pups of the big newspapers line the streets of major cities around the world, especially London, which sees in excess of 1.5 million copies distributed every day. The problem is so bad that various London councils have threatened to ban their distribution if the distributors don’t clean up their act. Not happy to cut their circulation, of course, they have asked people to recycle the papers; which is about as effective as asking a city broker to forego his Christmas bonus.

To bad that the ban hasn’t happened, then we would have been spared the gross excess of what I am pretty sure is the most irresponsible travel article published in modern times, maybe ever if you take into account the potential attractiveness of the journey being hyped.

AFRICA…IN A WEEKEND

Don’t forget it is the people of the UK who are seeing this article, and we’re not talking about North Africa, we’re talking about Cape Town, South Africa – a distance of nearly 25,000 miles there and back. According to “Climate Care” (I feel sure I’ll be blogging about them soon), the flight described, for each person will emit 2.8 tonnes of carbon dioxide, which is the average annual total emissions for a person in Latin America. Here’s the strapline:

“Cape Town may be a long way away, but if you’re short on time, don’t dismiss it. With overnight flights and zero jet lag, a four-day jaunt is the perfect introduction to South Africa’s most cosmopolitan city,” writes Alistair Foster.

It just shreaks of “rich guy doesn’t give a toss about the planet” doesn’t it? But of course the author has a Get Out Of Jail Free card, simply by writing “I know it’s not eco-friendly to go so far in such a short time, but it’s the only long-haul trip I’ll do all year.” Try telling that to the Puerto Rican who has just realised that his entire annual emissions have been equalled by your quick trip to a cosmopolitan place. And what about that “only long-haul trip”? Poor Mr Foster, only one long-haul trip! Ah well, you can have another next year, along with your (implied) 2 or 3 other return flights closer to home: maybe that’ll put you nearer the Mexican emissions average on flights alone.

I was assuming that the publisher of the London Lite, in which this grotesque article appeared, would have something to say; but all I got was “It’s a travel article”, from a reporter, and “We don’t have a published environmental policy” from the Legal office of Daily Mail Ltd, the parent company.  So, not quite hypocrisy, but wait…the suggested tour operator (the one that paid for the flights in question) is none other that Virgin Holidays. Yes, that Virgin, the one owned by our beloved Richard Branson, who is apparently quite the eco-hero in corporate circles…

Something about the use of Kermit the Frog pulled me in to explore Ford’s concept ethanol high-powered luxury saloon (adjective overload, sorry) – the Lincoln MKR. That’s one problem with cars, there are so many different ways of describing them, you start run out of space – so, here’s an easy way of describing them: polluters. It’s a car, it pollutes, get over it.

How ever much Ford try to dress this monster saloon up as green in design (gee, it has recycled wood and chrome free leather up front, that’ll make it a “green” car then), green in fuel  (it uses 85% ethanol, which means your food is now going to be turned into fuel) or green in, well just green-ness, they will never escape the fundamental problem that building and selling cars is a totally unsustainable activity, and if they want to go green then they should go out of business. But here’s where the brainwashing starts: “GUILT FREE”.

Yahoo!

I couldn’t contain myself there, I’m just so excited that I can now buy a car which, despite the fact that it does a measly 27 miles per gallon, is just so brilliant that I need feel no guilt at all. If you drive a Lincoln, then you must really empathise with this quote, from Ford’s Executive Director of Design, in an article called “Guilt Free Luxury with the Lincoln MKR” :

“The Lincoln driver wants to spend money and enjoy it, but not at the expense of other people or the environment”

Yeah, right. The Lincoln driver who decided that a big luxurious car was the best way of caring for other people and the environment. But you still have my sympathy; after all, who told you luxury could be “guilt free” but the hypocritical idiots who sold you the car in the first place.

Oh, where to start on the horrors of oil sands extraction, as both a local and a global destroyer of environments? 155,000 barrels of oil a day, according to Shell’s proud boast. A filthy fuel source that requires twice as much water to steam off the oil, as the oil itself. An industrial process that is guaranteed to leach and creep tarry residues into the soil, the rivers, the skins of animals, human and non-human alike. A momentous drive to make Canada the second largest producer of oil in the world, simply to ensure that north America can continue driving up carbon dioxide levels in sustaining a “lifestyle”.

This is all fact. Now for the fiction.

“For us, as a company, the scientific debate about climate change is over. The debate now is about what we can do about it. Businesses, like ours, should turn CO2 management into a business opportunity and lead the search for responsible ways to manage CO2, use energy more efficiently and provide the extra energy the world needs to grow. But that also requires concerted action by governments to create the long-term, market-based policies needed to make it worthwhile to invest in energy efficiency, CO2 mitigation and lower carbon fuels. With fossil fuel use and CO2 levels continuing to grow fast, there is no time to lose.”

This quote by Jeroen van der Veer, Shell’s global Chief Executive is bullshit of the highest order. Shell’s raison d’etre, as a corporation, is to make money, and it does that by selling oil. It convinces people that selling oil is necessary by using phrases like “provide the extra energy the world needs to grow”. Excuse me? Exactly how is filling the biosphere and the atmosphere with pollutants going to help the world “grow”?

Oh, I see! You mean, help the pockets and the bank balances of the already rich and powerful grow, for the mere inconvenience of extinguishing life on Earth.

I have left the most extraordinary quote until the end, though. This comes from Shell Canada’s web site. It says: “Environmentally, in 2004 the AOSP became the first oil sands operation to have its environmental management system certified under ISO 14001.” Well done, Shell. You have succeeded in making ISO 14001 the most irresponsible, hypocritical international standard in existance.

You can be sure of Shell.

So I’m browsing the Guardian web site, looking for this and that, and I come across this little nugget. Someone (I’m not sure they have really as it’s really an advert) has asked those nice people at British Gas how to save energy. “Of course!” BG cry, “We can save you money!”

“But that’s not what I wanted,” says imaginary Stewert Hancock, “I wanted to save energy.

“Look at all the money you can save, Mr Hancock. Money, money, money! Doesn’t that sound nice?”

“I only wanted to make my children happy.”

How typical of British Gas (and foolish of The Guardian’s Editors) to turn something that should be an altruistic activity into ways of saving money. This is an absolute rock-solid indication of how BG would never dent its bottom line by allowing people to question the system that ensures their shareholders are kept in profit.

If British Gas were serious about saving the planet then their bottom line would be that such energy saving actions should be carried out because the planet is being killed by our activities; but it all comes down to money. Money that ensures that, if British Gas can continue to look good enough then they can continue trading rather than having their motives questioned deeply by the public who have been made blind to the greenwash being thrown over them by energy companies.

Youngs, a huge producer of seafood, are asking people to make fish their Christmas dinner. They want to look like a sustainable company too. Their policy on emissions goes like this:

“We are acutely aware of wider environmental concerns, most particularly the impact of emissions which contribute to global warming. We have therefore begun a detailed programme of initiatives designed to drive down the direct CO2 footprint of our business, as well as making this a priority throughout our supply chain, and with our business partners.”

So, The Unsuitablog congratulates them on managing to produce an item of food caught near to the UK, and getting to UK shops 17,000 miles later:

The whole story can be found at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7150834.stm. Thanks BBC!

How can Youngs say it is more environmentally friendly to eat up so many food miles? Pay people in Thailand crap wages to peel prawns by hand, that’s how. Of course you wouldn’t catch them asking people in the UK to do things by hand, would you ;-)

Yes, Tesco want to make sure you are saving plastic bags, so offer you loyalty points each time to reuse your own. Well done Tesco! Now let’s see what else you can get with your Clubcard…

Superb. Not a hint of hypocrisy here. Fly, fly, fly, with Tesco.

http://www.tesco.com/clubcard/deals/product.aspx?R=236