Eco Spam of the week goes to the National Ethanol Vehicles Coalition, as promoted by that true friend of the planet General Motors. Here’s the email, with a few salient points picked out…

Keith,

As your readers make their annual snowbird trek to warmer climates, let them know that their trip could help kick our nation’s dependence on foreign oil.

Snowbirds traveling along the I-65 Biofuels Corridor, the first national, cross-country corridor of E85 ethanol stations, can drive from the shores of Lake Michigan in Indiana all the way to the Gulf Coast in Alabama and be at least a quarter of a tank from an E85 pump. New stations along this stretch of highway have opened over the past year in Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee and Alabama giving consumers the option to refuel with E85. Flex-fuel vehicle owners can refuel with ethanol to help reduce the nation’s dependence on petroleum and reduce carbon emissions.

Your readers can find stations along their route by visiting the National Ethanol Vehicle Coalition’s (NEVC) website -http://www.e85refueling.com/.

If you’re interested in learning more, please let me know. I’d be happy to provide additional information about the I-65 Biofuels Corridor and GM’s efforts to pursue alternative fuel solutions.

Best,

Bethany Ciampa
Mullen for General Motors

Ok, so what do we have here? First is the incredible assumption that “my readers” (who she assumes are all based in the USA of course – as people like this do) like to take annual trips south to their second homes, clocking up thousands of miles in the process and emitting tons of carbon dioxide as they go. In her defence — if there is any — she actually sent it to Green Seniors, which I help run, but still completely ignored the fact that “my readers” aren’t so dumb to be taken in by the oily words of one of the world’s largest (for the time being) corporations.

Second, that E85 — a mix of ethanol and petrol — actually has any environmental benefits. In the first instance, corn based ethanol is very energy inefficient to produce so even though it is plant-based, it is almost always heavily fertilized, processed, blasted with heat to distil it…all of which produce a great deal of greenhouse gas. If that weren’t bad enough, this is a classic case of Business As Usual Ethics making people think that because something is “greener” then they can carry on using it to their hearts content, without thinking of the repercussions of their continued high-consumption way of life: this is what the corporations want, and this is why they greenwash.

Finally, GM itself has as its (thankfully shrinking) core business, huge investment in the kind of trucks and SUVs seen in the photo: by showing an interest in E85 and making their gas-guzzlers able to take this fuel, they can carry on selling them, without having to compromise their abhorrant business in any significant way. The vehicle in the photo does a combined 17MPG!

Here was my response:

Bethany

General Motors, environmentally friendly? Don’t make me laugh!

Remind me at what point GM decided to stop marketing gas-guzzling SUVs and pickups to the general public, and what marvellous strides GM have made to bring the USA’s emissions down by the required 90% by 2030? Sorry, I must have missed that among all your other efforts to screw up the planet.

http://stopgreenwash.org/casestudy_gm

Regards

Keith

P.S. For your greenwashing efforts, you have just booked yourself a spot on The Unsuitablog (www.unsuitablog.com)

I strongly recommend you follow the link, and find out what GM are really all about.

Big companies know they have to look good: that is why Corporate Social Responsibility — one of the most blatant misnomers of all time — was created. Produce a nice thick report saying all the good things you have done in the last financial year, and outlining all of the charitable giving, sustainability projects, improvements to your environmental and social impact and other great things you are planning and you have the means to pull the wool over the eyes of anyone who can’t be bothered to scrape off the surface veneer and look at what you really do as a company.

It is a truism that if a company is included in any of the major global stock indices like the Dow Jones Industrial Average or the FTSE-100 it will be unsustainable: that is, it has to have made a whacking great profit in the previous indexing period and, as such, will have to have made that profit at something else’s expense. If you want to make a profit out of oil, simply extract, refine and transport it at less than the amount someone is prepared to pay you for it — oil may be running out, but while people continue to burn it, and you have the means to produce it, you can still make a profit; if you want to make a profit out of retail, simply produce the goods and retail them at a cost less than you sell the product for — consumer goods may be selling slower, but while people still want to buy crap, and you have a million factory slaves working for you, you can still make a profit.

Basically, if you are a successful company, you will have got there by screwing either people, the planet, or more likely both.

But if you can produce some nice reports saying how responsible you are, you can still get to the top of a list of “Good Companies”, like the one published in The Observer this week.

In order to get into the Top 20, you will have to have been more than three-quarters perfect, according to the scoring system:

The idea is that the index should be helpful to investors who wish to hold shares in or deal with companies that try to make a positive contribution to society and follow good corporate governance practice.

Ethical investment is subjective – different people have different views on what they consider acceptable – and we do not make any judgment about the social usefulness or otherwise of particular industries. Some companies that would normally be excluded by ethical and green investment funds, because they operate in areas such as tobacco or arms, are included.

The maximum possible score is 100, with marks awarded on three main sets of criteria:

1 How companies report on their social and environmental risks and manage their impact – for instance, how they deal with workplace relations and environmental issues, and how well they perform in undertaking charity work. This accounts for 40 per cent of the overall score.

2 The quality of corporate governance. This includes the independence of the board, the quality of executive pay policies and the alignment of interests between executives and shareholders. This accounts for 30 per cent of the total score.

3 Sector issues – how companies address issues specific to their industry. For instance, food retailers are graded on responsible sourcing of products, labelling and sustainability; for a power company, these would include progress towards a lower-carbon portfolio. This accounts for 30 per cent of the total score.

The main source for the assessments is companies’ own reporting.

Surely this kind of system wouldn’t encourage companies to be a little flexible with the truth, would it? Take a look at the list of companies and see whether any of them strike you as rather less than good:

1 Scottish & South’n Energy 93.40
2 Kingfisher 87.05
3 BT Group 86.64
4 Mondi 85.94
5 Royal & Sun Alliance 83.00
6 Shaftesbury 82.82
7 Vodafone 81.50
8 Mouchel 81.27
9 Aviva 80.42
10 Johnson Matthey 79.89
11 Rolls-Royce 79.58
12 GKN 78.41
13 Smith & Nephew 77.28
14 BG Group 77.16
15 Hammerson 77.07
16 Tui Travel 76.89
17 Bhp Billiton 76.82
18 Marks & Spencer 76.61
19 Interserve 76.59
20 Atkins 76.41

You will probably not have heard of all of them, but I bet you have heard of, say Rolls-Royce (who produce engines for civilian and military aircraft), BG Group (whose entire business depends on people burning fossil fuels), Atkins (advisors to road builders, oil companies and the military) and our good friend BHP Billiton, who have pride of place on The Unsuitablog as uber-greenwashers.

Among the other companies are a military helicopter firm, a number of large-scale retail and business property developers, an air travel company and a company that specialise in selling cheap mass-produced goods.

Lists like this are a travesty — they seem to exist solely to pump up the appalling reputations of undeserving businesses who, in a time when the commerce boom is deflating should really be questioning their very existence. Or perhaps it’s people like us who should start learning to reject the very foundations of a society that considers a multi-billion dollar company to be “good”.

Short of cash in this time of economic downturn? Want to be environmentally and socially responsible?

Well, why not forget about buying people lots of crap for Christmas and instead offer to help them out with something they couldn’t do on their own; or perhaps make something yourself; or maybe give them something you have grown; or, perchance, forego the seasonal rush for pointless gifts and just spend a bit of time with your family and friends enjoying each other’s company.

What would Jesus have done?

According to overstock.com, he would probably have bought a Chinese Lacquered Altar Cabinet for $875…

Dear Editor,

Kill two birds with one stone — or rather save them by buying green gifts this season — You can provide your loved ones with unique gifts and at the same time preserve our eco system and give back globally to those in need. Overstock.com offers a lush selection of green and eco-friendly goods.

Choose from a vast selection eco-friendly bamboo home decor gift items, as well as, gifts and handmade jewelry from Worldstock, Overstock.com’s socially responsible division, which supports underprivileged artisans from around the globe– therefore sustaining cultures and helping to end world poverty.

Everyone is counting their pennies this Christmas due to the downward economy, but it doesn’t mean holiday gifting has to be compromised. Overstock has been able to acquire more inventory than usual this season due to brick and mortar woes’ and the overflow from cancellations on their orders.

…

Powerstrip Productions
Public Relations
Contact:
Lea Yannetti: Melissa Miller:
lea@powerstripproductions.com melissa@powerstripproductions.com
(917) 463-3692

Yes, my eco-spam of the week comes courtesy of a company which made $32m in profit during the last financial quarter, and is reaping the rewards of the economic crunch by buying all the stuff that other stores couldn’t sell, at cutdown prices. On the other hand, they are apparently “helping to end world poverty” and helping “preserve our eco system” — which is a bit odd coming from a company which stocks 300 different types of MP3 player; 500 types of digital camera; 300 different televisions, including 30 with a screen size of more than 50 inches; 500 types of laptop; even 200 different snowboards!

Now, I think if you have to buy something, and you cannot get it from somewhere local, then fairly traded goods are the next best option and, to be fair, Overstock do have lots of these kind of items; but “preserving our eco system”? I don’t think so — not when the vast majority of their goods are mass consumer, mass produced, luxury goods of dubious origin. Worse still, if you look closely you find that many of those which are “fairly traded” (not that we should necessarily take their word for it) use materials which are likely to have been unsustainably logged:

Mahogany Wooden Table from China
Rosewood Stand from China
Mahogany Cabinet from China

Here’s my tip: just because a company says they are good, doesn’t mean they are good — especially when they send you emails trying to bang that point home.

What can you say about an advert that fills an entire page of a broadsheet newspaper, containing a title (“The Triangle Of Peace Foundation”), a heavy duty strapline (“The birth of Philanthropical Capitalism, a new global responsibility.”), an address in New York (“Triangle of Peace, 420 Lexington Ave, Suite 518, New York, NY 10170 USA”) and a section of some kind of stylised monolith, all tastefully decked out in black and white?

My instincts say, “What the hell is this?”

I am writing this article completely cold, and I want you to come with me, because everything about this advert says “sinister”; it says “hypocrisy”; it says “cover up”; it says “business as usual”. It says lots of things and none – because you are only meant to wonder. There is no telephone number; there is no web site.

It is aimed at big business, and my bet is that it is the start of a new club in which the remaining “masters of the universe” reposition themselves as the saviours of the human race.

Let’s see if I am right.

Google search: “the triangle of peace foundation” = no hits.

Google search: “triangle of peace” = 59,000 hits.

A quick browse finds www.triangleofpeace.tv and a video which puts the United Arab Emirates in the driving seat:

http://www.triangleofpeace.tv/?bcpid=1827892797&bclid=1825927544&bctid=1840665880

“Peace and stability through trade”. What do you think of that? Trade is ultimately the cause of all anthropogenic global warming, and a leading cause of social hardship (think slavery, sweatshops and urban deprivation). Is this The Triangle Of Peace Foundation?

There is an Invitation to a star-studded Reception Dinner, based at Jumeirah Essex House, New York. Let’s find the address of this hotel…

…it’s at NY 10019, so not far away from the address given above. But this looks too similar to the sense of the print advert, so let’s find out more. Back to the Google search…

Bingo! It is launch day, today, in the UAE, according to Cityscape Intelligence. The article says:

The Triangle of Peace initiative has been launched by a collective led by Sheikh Nahyan bin Zayed Al-Nahyan.

Dhabian Holdings and the World Trade Centers Association and the World Trade Centers Management Company are all behind the $3.2 billion proposal which is hoping to provide a programme which will help build sustainable communities.

More than one million corporations are to be involved in the project when it is officially launched in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on November 10th.

Guy Tozzoli, president of World Trade Centers Association, said: “The Triangle of Peace Initiatives are essentially three programs for building new and restoring and rejuvenating existing cities.”

They offer a higher quality of life as well as a variety of social and economic benefits united by a vision of peace brought about by trade, he added.

On September 23rd the project was officially announced in New York and enrolled in the United Nations’ Global Partnerships programme.

There is so much wrong with this whole concept, I don’t know where to start, but I do know that we have found the source of the advert, and also that the following organisations are involved:

– The government of the United Arab Emirates (an oil-rich dictatorship, dependent on global trade)

– Many, many corporations (which would obviously define trade as being the most important thing…ever)

– The Clinton Global Initiative (members only global projects body)

– World Trade Centers Association (a organization dedicated to expanding world trade, strapline “Peace and Stability Through Trade” – where have we seen that before?!)

– United Nations Global Partnership Program (I can’t find any official reference to this, but as an example of the kinds of bodies enrolled in this Program, take a look at this one, which offers courses in everything you need to f*ck up the planet!)

What is particularly significant, but not surprising given the level of stupidity practiced by many people in the public eye, is the level of support this work is garnering outside of the commercial arena (or at least being shown as support); especially as this does indeed appear to derive simply from one, very small, very rich playground: Dubai. So sad, yet so symptomatic of how dumb civilization can be.

Given that information, I’ve decided to add the rather unsavoury, but accurate subtitle, “Shitting On Us All” to this article.

Ok, so where now? Well, it’s clear that The Triangle Of Peace Foundation is a front for expanding global trade, under the pretence of peace and sustainability, but far more than that, it appears to be both fronting a number of massive development projects to enrich the bank accounts of its members (see this press release to see the level of glee one real estate web site expresses over the idea), and also acting as a focus for many of the worlds richest and most powerful people to make themselves richer and more powerful.

I was right.

Open your eyes.

I’m going to make a prediction, and you can hold me to this: within a year of taking office, Barack Obama will seem like just another President of the United States. I feel sorry for him because — having an instinct for these things — I think he really does want to make change happen, at least in a social context, yet he has but one choice: toe the line or face the consequences.

A few months ago I wrote a highly contentious article called “Obama Or McCain: Who Cares?” which said the following:

Sorry to upset your political sensibilities — if you feel that party politics is a big deal — but it makes no difference at all who becomes president; and here is why.

It has always been the foreign policy of all civilized nations to maximise the amount of resources it can obtain, whether that be fossil fuels, metals, farmland, fish or slaves — like the people who make most of our clothes and consumer goods. Civilization requires natural resources and labor in order to keep it running: failure to secure these is economic and political suicide. The USA is no different: neither Obama nor McCain will change that policy, because one of them will become head of the most powerful civilized nation on Earth. Their raison d’etre will be to ensure the continued success of that nation on the world stage, and so their primary objective will be to secure resources — that’s the way it has always been; that’s why all civilizations have sought to create empires.

Don’t get me wrong, the man in office may want to change, but his head will be on the block from Day One. Should he choose to make sweeping changes to the healthcare system that are detrimental to the income of the pharmaceutical industry, those changes will be watered down or canned via the House or the Senate (whichever has the ear of that industry); should he choose to implement tough new emissions regulations on vehicles (detrimental to the motor and oil industry), those changes will be watered down or canned; should he choose to impose strict rules on employee exploitation, which hurt the bottom line of retailers, those changes will be watered down or canned; should he choose to ban all logging and toxic releases in protected areas, and expand these protected areas, those changes will be watered down or canned.

Should he try and defy the powers that be, he will put himself in serious danger. There is a precedent for this.

Worse still, none of the changes described above will actually make a significant difference to the net impact of civilization upon the lives of people, and the environment which we all depend on: the President operates within a context of continuing to expand Industrial Civilization. The President has no choice but to work with the system. The President will do the bidding of the system because he represents the system, in all its toxic glory.

That is why Barack Obama will become a greenwasher — it’s his job, whether he likes it or not.

Let’s suppose you have a global brand that you know full well is responsible for mass ecological and social damage, not only directly through the consumption of water, energy, metals and land, along with annual greenhouse gas emissions of 3.8 million tonnes (the same emissions as the whole of Paraguay); but also indirectly through the huge commercial infrastructure that exists to produce, distribute, promote, sell and dispose of your products; and not least the great efforts you spend trying to homogenise entire cultures in order that you can sell as much of your product as humanly possible.

So, given that — and the fact that your company group also does the same, and worse, through its other products, including a vast array of snack food and, through contractual guarantees, gains incredible marketing presence via some of the largest junk food outlets in the world — you might just want to improve your image a bit in a market that, at least commercially, values being “green” as increasingly a good thing.

What you don’t want to do is send a press release out to an anti-greenwashing web site extolling the commercial advantages of such a move; especially as the web site is likely to print the press release in full to show how utterly hypocritical you are, with the more important points show in bold:

Pepsi, today, is launching not one, but two Web sites trumpeting its eco-friendly efforts [1]. PepsiEcoChallenge.com and Pepsirecycling.com both spotlight Pepsi-Cola North America’s slew of sustainability programs.

Pepsi spent $11 million online last year [7] and $9 million for the first seven months of 2008, per TNS Media Intelligence.

A few comments from the above:

[1] Why “trumpeting”, surely just doing it is what matters – if you are an “eco friendly” company, then you don’t have to tell everyone about it, do you?
[2] Yes, what about a Smart Car, that’ll make the customer feel better and, more importantly, make them think the prize giver is a real swell company.
[3] I wonder why they haven’t talked about just doing craft for the sake of it? Could it be they want you to buy some 12 pack cartons?
[4] Well, of course it’s a brochure, because we are talking about corporate marketing here.
[5] Here’s the big “reveal”: because it’s what “consumers demand”, then it would be commercial suicide not to appear “eco friendly”
[6] Slightly sinister, this: by showing “decision makers” what they are doing, it prevents “decision makers” from making laws and policies that might force Pepsi to make significant changes. This is a self-protection mechanism.
[7] Why on Earth would this be relevant, unless it was aimed at those who want to also gain commercially from Pepsi’s efforts – maybe by getting Pepsi to advertise on their “eco” web sites. Hmm!

Something also struck me, while I was browsing the Carbon Disclosure information about PepsiCo. The following statement makes very clear that the Earth Institute at Columbia University is nothing more than a commercially funded set of projects designed to benefit monied corporations — I will be following up on this later…

As for PepsiCo — they are just another corporation desperately trying to look good in order to take a bigger slice of the market.

Following on from my series about supermarkets in schools, here is something that has been irritating me for a while: British Gas are part of a huge energy company known as Centrica, which operates in energy markets across the world. For many years now BG have been losing out to other energy companies in the domestic market due to the deregulation of the energy industry; they have managed to diversify into electricity, but are nothing like the force they were before the 1990s in the UK.

So what have they decided to do? Get into the business of education, subtly but incidiously. Here is the advert for their Generation Green campaign…

Like the supermarket campaigns, schools can get rewards for collecting vouchers, or “leaves” (love the green tinge already!). I have no idea how many leaves are required for a solar panel, so it would be foolish for me to suggest that it would be an extraordinary amount, but it might be – that’s all I’m saying.

More importantly for British Gas, there is a huge amount of subtle marketing going on:

– To get 200 leaves, a school can download a lesson plan which contains lots of information about saving energy, but also has a British Gas logo on every page. The lesson plans are particularly interesting in that when they discuss the causes of climate change they highlight how bad coal is, but completely neglect to mention natural gas as also being a source of both carbon dioxide and methane. Interesting.

– To get 150 leaves, a parent can complete a British Gas “Energy Saver’s Report“. I started to fill one out, honestly, and at Step 6 was asked what my main heating fuel was – it is wood, but this is not an option. I carried on, using gas as my source, and when I got to this page things got even stranger – I could not say that I only heat my home in the evening, and I could not say that my thermostat was set to 15C. The minimum allowed was 19 degrees centigrade – very hot for us. I completed the plan, and was offered some nice services and goods that could be supplied by British Gas, and that I had only earned 100 leaves!

This entire operation has light green platitudes stamped all over it, just like the supermarket greenwashing I wrote about last week. The changes suggested are not bad, but they are insufficient and completely within the comfort zone of a commercial organisation.

It also, like the supermarket vouchers, allows a large commercial entity to worm its way into a so-called place of education, via the teachers and students using the lesson plans, and the parents of the students filling out surveys in order to earn the schools more leaves.

Now watch the advert again and see how good you feel about British Gas.

(although I love the idea of shutting down the lights at the supermarket – go on kids, you know it makes sense!)

Michelin sell tyres. Lots and lots of them: in 2006 Michelin sold about 220 million tyres, and tyre sales account for nearly 90% of all Michelin’s business. If it were not for tyres, Michelin would not exist. In fact, if it were not for replacement tyres, which account for 75% of all Michelin’s tyre sales, then Michelin would be but a small husk of its current behemothic self.

Michelin needs people to replace their tyres, which is why Michelin have begun a massive greenwashing campaign.

The advert above, if clicked upon takes the web user to a handy calculator. I tried it out on my rarely used car, a medium sized diesel estate which manages 40MPG (about 32MPG in the USA). Apparently, over the lifetime of a new set of Michelin replacement tyres, I could prevent 202kg of carbon dioxide entering the atmosphere.

Fab! So, let’s look at this a little closer; first, pausing for another commercial break…

You see, I don’t even have to leave my car at home to be environmentally friendly – according to the wording of the advert, it is just as good to drive. Really?

That 202kg of carbon dioxide needs looking at carefully. According to the UK Vehicle Licencing Office my car emits about 170 grams of carbon dioxide per kilometre, so that means that Michelin tyres allow me to drive for an extra 1200km (720 miles) without emitting any carbon dioxide. But go to the “REDUCE CO2 EMISSIONS” page, and you find that the per kilometre reduction in emissions is only 4%, which implies (a) the tyres last for 30,000km (that is utterly incredible) and (b) in order to get that 202kg saving I have to drive for 30,000km.

Let’s put that another way: Michelin are effectively saying — and are being pretty explicit about this — that it is environmentally fine to drive 30,000km in order to save the equivalent of only 1,200km of carbon emissions. That means that the remaining 28,800km (or 4.8 tonnes of carbon dioxide) has, in Michelin’s world, disappeared!

“Now you don’t have to leave your car at home to save fuel!”

There is almost nothing I can say to make this acceptable: that isn’t just greenwashing, it is a blatant lie! Maybe Michelin would care to explain how this remarkable advert ever came to see the light of day.

In the previous part of this series I wrote about two prime examples of greenwash being used to maximise the success of School Supermarket Voucher Schemes. In this final part I will explain who the real winners and losers are, and what you can do to change things…

By now it’s pretty clear that supermarkets are not giving anything away with their voucher schemes, and may be gaining an awful lot — but it’s also possible that schools get something out of these schemes too, as exemplified by the quotes in Part Two. If it is indeed the case that schools benefit from these schemes, then how do you explain the Tesco advert below:

There’s no shortage of urgency to get everyone you could possibly influence to go down to their local Tesco and get hold of vouchers; but maybe Tesco, or Sainsburys, or Morrisons, or Asda are being genuinely altruistic and the extra sales are just a useful by-product of providing a valuable social service. To help you decide, I have carried out a short analysis of the four schemes mentioned (note that these are the four largest supermarket chains in the UK, and they all ran or are running schemes in 2008, so I’m not picking on any one company) to find out who gains most financially from them. You can access the relevant catalogue by clicking on the supermarket name. I have only used items that represent the overall range (low, mid and high value), and for which I can reasonably accurately provide a sales price.

Tesco Computers For Schools

Tesco CD-R Pack
Voucher = 360
Sale Price = £3
Voucher Price = £3600
Store/School Benefit Ratio = 120:1 (i.e. store gains £120 for every £1 school gains)

Samsung S630 Digital Camera
Vouchers = 3300
Sale Price = £70
Voucher Price = £33,000
Store/School Benefit Ratio = 471:1

Apple 20″ iMac
Vouchers = 26,500
Sale Price = £900
Voucher Price = £260,500
Store/School Benefit Ratio = 290:1

Asda Go Green For Schools

Eco-Ed Poster Set
Vouchers = 300
Sale Price = £6
Voucher Price = £3000 (based on one carrier bag containing £10 worth of goods)
Store/School Benefit Ratio = 500:1

Pocket Microscope Set
Vouchers = 800
Sale Price = £30
Voucher Price = £8000
Store/School Benefit Ratio = 266:1

Bird View Remote Camera System
Vouchers = 3000
Sale Price = £170
Voucher Price = £30,000
Store/School Benefit Ratio = 176:1

Sainsburys Active Kids

PVC Rounders Bat
Vouchers = 94
Sale Price = £6
Voucher Price = £940
Store/School Benefit Ratio = 156:1

V12 Panther Cricket Bat
Vouchers = 280
Sale Price = £14
Voucher Price = £2800
Store/School Benefit Ratio = 200:1

Butterfly Compact Outdoor Table Tennis Table
Vouchers = 7969
Sale Price = £240
Voucher Price = £79,690
Store/School Benefit Ratio = 332:1

Morrisons Let’s Grow

All Purpose Plant Food
Vouchers = 68
Sale Price = £7
Voucher Price = £680
Store/School Benefit Ratio = 97:1

Graduate Spade
Vouchers = 340
Sale Price = £20
Voucher Price = £3400
Store/School Benefit Ratio = 170:1

4′ x 6′ Greenhouse Twin Wall
Vouchers = 4979
Sale Price = £260
Voucher Price = £49,790
Store/School Benefit Ratio = 192:1

What is very clear from the above analysis, is that with nothing else taken into account, the financial benefit to the supermarket is between 100 and 500 times the benefit gained by the school. Bear in mind that although vouchers would be given with shopping regardless of whether the shopper bought more than they normally do, the schemes are (as the advert at the beginning of this article showed) are designed to take custom from other stores, so there is a net benefit to the store that gains the most publicity: hence the posters and banners provided to schools. Also, the sale price of an item is likely to be much lower to the store, equivalent to the wholesale price of the goods purchased by the shopper — so, the ratio provided is a good reflection of how much the store benefits financially from the schemes.

There are, of course some benefits to the schools — here they are:

1) Equipment
2) Information packs

That said, here’s a list of the benefits, in addition to increased sales, to the supermarkets:

1) Free in-school advertising
2) Customer loyalty and children as future customers
3) Socially responsible image
4) Ability to influence curriculum

The outcome is very clear: the supermarkets are the outright winners of these schemes, in almost every way imaginable. The losers are the shoppers who will buy far more than normal to obtain vouchers but, most of all the children who are being subjected to continual corporate brainwashing, right under the noses of the very people who have been entrusted with their education and well-being.

The supermarkets aren’t the only businesses responsible for this, either: brands like Flora, Cadburys, Walkers and Nestle are all competing for a piece of the education system, and the attention of children not just in the UK, but right across the world, and it’s getting more intense all the time.

What You Can Do

If this makes you feel angry and determined to do something, there are many things you can do.

1) Join a campaign group: in the USA, the main group is Commercial Alert; in Ireland, the group is Commercial Free Education. Incredibly, no such group exists in the UK, unless you can tell me otherwise. If you are keen to set up such a group then The Unsuitablog will be happy to support you.

2) Tell teachers, friends and children about the harm caused by commercial advertising in schools, and the huge benefits the supermarkets and other businesses gain from such schemes (or rather, commercial promotions). Refer to this study if you need evidence, or show people the catalogues and posters for examples. Write letters to newspapers, blog about the subject and repost the links to this series of articles:

Schools Supermarket Vouchers Special: Part 1
Schools Supermarket Vouchers Special: Part 2
Schools Supermarket Vouchers Special: Part 3

3) Refuse vouchers when offered them, explaining your reasons and, if you can, don’t go to supermarkets at all. Write to the offending companies saying that you will not be a customer unless they stop running such promotions.

4) Demand that your school (or your childrens school) removes advertising from within in grounds, or on its boundaries. This is a breach of ethics and trust. First speak to the head teacher and if this doesn’t help, write to the board of governors. If this is unsuccessful then you may have to take direct action.

5) Subvertise and/or remove offending advertising in and around schools. A pair of wire cutters is very useful for removing banner adverts on school boundaries, and if you come across posters in and around the school then simply remove them — if challenged then ask why the posters are there in the first place.

In the first part of this series I explained how supermarkets have infiltrated schools with their clever voucher schemes, and the various tricks that the business use to ensure they are as successful as possible. In this part I will highlight two attempts at greenwashing that have been accepted as fact by school leaders, teachers, parents and children…

Greenwashing stinks! That you already know. What isn’t always clear, though, is when greenwashing is actually taking place: you can use this guide to help with its identification, but when you have something as insidious as a school voucher scheme being accepted wholeheartedly by everyone attached to thousands of schools, then the whole greenwashing concept starts to seem a little hazy.

It’s not. There is nothing hazy about the following acts of greenwashing except the minds of the people who have allowed it to be part of the “educational” process…

Morrisons’ Let’s Grow

If you read my entries on The Sietch and The Earth Blog, you will know that I am a huge supporter of many types of self-sufficiency, which includes — to a very large extent — growing your own food. So, anything that gets children interested in the potential of home growing as a source of food is obviously a good thing: it removes the carbon footprint of “food miles”; it encourages children to take an interest in where their food comes from; it can cause a dramatic shift in diet from processed, high-energy foods to natural, healthy ones; most importantly it can help reconnect children to the very landbase which we depend upon for our survival.

So why are Morrisons, the fourth largest supermarket chain in the UK, trying to bring self-sufficiency to schools around the country — have they discovered a moral bone within their, well-publicised, history of environmental stonewalling?

Let’s Grow aims to help schools capture the imagination of the nation’s kids to show them that food doesn’t just come from supermarkets. By collecting Let’s Grow vouchers you’ll be enabling kids to get their hands dirty for good reason by giving them the opportunity to grow their own food in the school grounds.

All very worthy, and on message. Food doesn’t just come from supermarkets: very true, and seemingly in opposition to the raison d’etre of a supermarket. But take a closer look at the “Fact Sheet For Teachers” and things start to become clearer.

The key points are easy to identify:

1) There is, of course, the required grocery spend for vouchers — £10 for one, in this case — so it is clear from the off that this isn’t a social enterprise on behalf of the business.

2) On registration, the school are supplied with “free” teaching resources. The guides are pretty good: they cover all the basics about preparation, composting, growing, harvesting and many other things. Most of the guides are branded with the Morrisons logo.

3) Schools are provided with posters and banners, which they can display all round the school and, very importantly, on the school boundaries, so that passers-by can see what the school, and Morrisons, are doing.

As you will see in Part Three, the voucher purchase alone makes this “green” scheme very good for business, as does the branding: but its the nature of the business itself, a huge business with a turnover of £8bn in the last financial year, that makes this so droll. Morrisons, like all large supermarkets, import the vast majority of their produce from overseas and, unlike some other chains, push their “budget” produce very heavily, at the expense of local and organic goods, which are routinely sidelined. This is the profit motive writ large. The benefits of the scheme to the supermarket are primarily at the checkout, but by wrapping the scheme in something so obviously counter to the supermarket culture, they are able to appear “outside the system”.

Morrisons know, full well, that the vast majority of children and adults who get involved in the scheme will become slightly more loyal to the Morrisons brand as a result of the socially beneficial appearance of the scheme; a small minority may well decide they don’t need supermarkets and will strive to grow their own food and buy local produce, but they are the exception. Morrisons have done a great job greenwashing their brand.

Asda Go Green For Schools

As the second largest supermarket chain in the UK, and part of the largest corporation on Earth, Asda (or rather, AsdaWalmart) are well placed to move into schools. Starting as a regional store group, they opened up their market by pushing their “mumsy” appeal, exemplified by the widely recognised Asda “bottom pat” (the bottoms in question being those of mothers who had spare change in their back pockets). Once they had captured the family market, Walmart took over (literally) and turned a medioum sized chain into a corporate behemoth.

It is this corporate behemoth that is now urging schools to “Go Green”. Bear in mind that Asda’s carbon emissions for 2007 were…oh dear! I don’t seem to be able to find them anywhere on the internet. In fact I spent over 20 minutes on the phone talking to the press office, the customer service office (in South Africa, bizarrely) and head office, and no one could tell me how much carbon Asda release. This is the single most important measure of environmental performance and it’s missing.

Here’s the entire set of phone calls for you to enjoy >>> Asda Can’t Tell Me Their Carbon Emissions

Looking at the Go Green For Schools website, it’s immediately clear that there is very little on offer. The scheme ran during the first half of 2008, and during that time teachers could download worksheets about various aspects of the environment (I can’t find any on the site) and also — and here’s the clincher — collect vouchers to save up for “eco-equipment”. The environmental scope of the scheme is limited to Reduce-Reuse-Recycle (which seems to skip the most important “reduce” bit entirely), plastic bags and packaging. The “eco-equipment” is pretty limited, and includes a set of 6 “Go Green For Schools” branded posters for “only” 300 vouchers.

Now here’s the clever bit: Asda don’t ask you to spend money for vouchers, they give you one every time you don’t ask for a carrier bag and use one of your own instead. This is another bit of classic greenwash: as I reported a while ago, plastic bags are just a bit of eco fluff that distract from the real environmental problems companies cause. But because people think they are being environmentally friendly, then they associate the scheme with genuine social concern — that all important feel-good factor that encourages loyalty. And you can only get a voucher if you have a bag’s worth of goods; to get three vouchers you have to buy three bag’s worth of goods.

It seems that schools have fallen for this scheme lock, stock and barrel:

“Many many thanks, what a wonderful supermarket you are! What a fantastic surprise we had, when we received all the lovely goodies from you.”
Dawn Sparrows
Pound Park Nursery & Early Years Centre, Charlton, London

“I am writing with a huge THANK YOU! We received your kind donation this morning of numerous items and we are absolutely delighted. The children are excited and enthused and eager to set up the mini green houses and can crushers…..! We really do appreciate the contribution to our school and the Eco Club. You have got our club off the ground! Thank you once again.”
Lucy Garside
Woodley Primary School, Stockport

“Thank you so much for the environmental prizes. We really work hard here to help our children find out more about the environment and how to look after it. The kits you sent will really help us do this.”
Lynne Cannon – Head Teacher
Saxon Wood, Hants

So are Asda greenwashing? Well, considering they do not publish any useful environmental information publically, they are (even more than Morrisons) a massive importer and retailer of consumer goods and exotic produce, and they are part of the largest global corporation in history: yes, that’s Asda Greenwashing at its best.

Next time I will explain who the real winners and losers are in the supermarket voucher schemes. even after what I have said, you might well be pretty shocked at the results.