| Friday, November 4, 2005 |  |
| Reporting Live from the Green Business Conference | 1 comment |
| 4 Nov 2005 @ 18:36 I've been here in San Francisco at the Green Business Conference all week. It's hosted by Coop America Amzing networking, visioning and good eats too. I'm here assisting my friends at Zhena's Gypsy Tea who are one of the sponsors and providing the tea service for the conference. This weekend we will also be at Green Fest, the public expo for green lving. My personal intention, greatly fulfilled, was to learn more about the feasibility of EcoSpirit, a Fair Trade gallery and folk craft store and educational center, meet potential investors, do market research, and create relationships within the Green Business community. There have been some really informative keynotes, such as Aveda, Patagonia, Organic Valley and break out sessions. At events like this I always look forward to the synchronistic and serendipitous that occurs. I've met some composers and video production folks and we are speaking about offering services to the Green Community for their promotional campaigns. My role of course would be producing music and jingles (which I see like musical Haikus). I also offered my services to balance the heady information saturation with my cedar flute and have played several times during the conference. Check out Coop America's website. They have been leaders for several decades in creating a healthier world. More > |
| McDonald's Latest Labeling & Greenwashing Scheme | 0 comments |
| 4 Nov 2005 @ 18:16 McDonald's Latest Labeling & Greenwashing Scheme [link] Published on Thursday, November 3, 2005 by CommonDreams.org McDonald's Labeling Scheme: Not Lovin' It by Michele Simon Last week, McDonald's announced its latest attempt to mutate into a responsible corporate citizen. Starting in 2006, the fast food behemoth promises to place nutrition information on the ³packaging² of most menu items. Placing aside corporate spin, questions loom large as to actual impact and underlying motivation. Upon closer inspection, the move is a thinly veiled attempt at deflecting government intervention that could have even greater impact. How effective is seeing the calories on the wrapper of a cheeseburger you¹ve already purchased? Imagine if at the grocery store, after buying all your food, along with your change you're handed the nutrition facts labels from each of the items you just bought. It's no wonder the law requiring nutrition labeling on products sold in stores wasn't written that way. Doing so would defeat the purpose of educating consumers to better inform their purchases. The McDonald's press release calls the move "the latest transparency initiative in the company's 30-year record of providing nutrition information to help customers make informed choices." Now that¹s creative rewriting of history. Let¹s go back precisely 30 years to when McDonald's fought off a federal proposal to require nutrition labeling on packaging. Ironically, the company used the same arguments that consumer groups now point to as the limitations of this approach. For example, a 1975 letter from McDonald's to the Food and Drug Administration reads: [Information on packaging] would result in only post-purchase communication to the customer. "[McDonald's proposed wall mounting] would provide all customers the nutritional information prior to consummating a purchase." McDonald's won that battle. History repeated itself 15 years later when McDonald's (along with the rest of the restaurant industry) successfully got itself exempt from the updated ³Nutrition Facts² labeling requirements for packaged food. According to Michael Jacobson, executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), the main consumer group behind the legislation, if restaurants had been covered in 1990, that bill never would have passed. Politics by ultimatum works wonders. That¹s why consumer groups such as CSPI have been lobbying for the past several years to pass new laws requiring restaurant chains to place basic nutrition information on menus and menu boards, to fill in this gaping hole in consumer information. With Americans eating half of all meals outside the home, why shouldn't chain restaurants be required to provide calorie, fat, and sodium content on menus and menu boards, where it would have the most impact? Marketers call such placement at the "point-of-purchase" and recognize that it's the most effective way of influencing consumer behavior with information. Yet the National Restaurant Association, whose members include thousands of McDonald's franchises, has been fighting tooth and nail against both federal and state bills, which explains why none of them has passed so far. When asked why the fast food chain won¹t go further and put the information on menu boards, McDonald's CEO Jim Skinner claimed that it would be too complex and slow down service. But Maine Representative Sean Faircloth doesn't buy that argument. Restaurant lobbyists have twice killed his bill to require the posting of calories on menu boards. Why so much resistance from restaurant chains? "Because they're worried that it would work," Faircloth says. "That people would change their behavior based on the information. And fast food companies don't like the idea of people having information so they can make informed choices," he said. That similar legislation is currently pending in several other states in part explains the timing of McDonald's announcement. If lawmakers think that corporations are improving policy on their own, they may deem these bills unnecessary. However, we have plenty of experience to know that voluntary, self-regulatory measures ultimately fail. Last year, Ruby Tuesday received much praise from consumer groups for starting to print calorie information on its menus. But just a few short months later, the company rescinded the policy for reasons that are unclear. Depending on who you ask, it was either too expensive to maintain or sales of the company¹s unhealthy items fell; in other words, it worked. Either way, access to more information may be good for public health, but it can also be bad for business. That's why laws are needed to require companies to change their practices. As soon as any voluntary measure negatively impacts a corporation¹s bottom line, the policy soon becomes a fleeting moment in history. Despite their claims of corporate responsibility, companies such as McDonald's don't act in the interest of consumers, but rather will do whatever is politically expedient in that particular moment. Three decades ago, the threat was government-regulated packaged labeling, and McDonald's fought that off successfully. Now the threat is menu labeling, so the company is attempting to deflect attention by providing something far less effective: labels on wrappers. CEO Skinner says the company is "putting the information customers need literally into their hands," which works out well for McDonald's because by then, the cheeseburgers, fries, and shakes are also already in their hands. Michele Simon, a public-health attorney who teaches health policy at UC Hastings College of the Law, directs the Center for Informed Food Choices, a nonprofit in Oakland. ### |
| Hijacked: Business for Social Responsibility | 0 comments |
| 4 Nov 2005 @ 18:14 Hijacked: Business for Social Responsibility [link] Published on Thursday, November 3, 2005 by CommonDreams.org Hijacked: Business for Social Responsibility by Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman We've just returned from the Business for Social Responsibility (BSR) conference being held here in Washington, D.C. We picked up maybe five pounds of propaganda being handed out by the sponsors -- ExxonMobil, Chevron, AstraZeneca, Walt Disney, Pfizer, General Electric, Altria/Philip Morris (remember: altriameanstobacco.com), McDonald's, Edison International, Starbucks, Ford Motor Company, Coca-Cola, Abbott Labs, Microsoft, Monsanto, KPMG, Chiquita -- among others. The news -- what these giant multinationals don't want you to know -- is that they hijacked Business for Social Responsibility from its founders. In 1991, the founders, a group of small businesses, wanted to counter the voices of the giant multinationals -- the Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable -- in the public policy arena. Enter Robert Dunn, stage right. Dunn is now chairman of Business for Social Responsibility. At the time, Dunn was a vice president at Levi Strauss, one of the large corporate members of the group. Dunn said to his colleagues -- the only way we are going to change large multinational corporations is to bring them into this organization. And the only way they will come into this organization is if we vow never to engage in the public policy arena. Dunn said that the focus of the organization would be on changing big corporations from within. Translation: No talk about government regulation. No talk about national health insurance. No talk about a living wage. No talk about war and peace. No talk about law and order -- for corporate criminals. In 1994, Monsanto, purveyor of genetically engineered foods, wanted into the group. One member, Gary Hirschberg, chairman of Stoneyfield Farms, said -- wait a second. Do we want a company that makes pesticides and herbicides and genetically engineered crops to be a member of a socially responsible business organization? Yes, came back the answer -- how else are they going to get better? Well what about tobacco companies? How else are they going to get better? What about oil and chemical companies? How else are they going to get better? What about nuclear companies? What about military companies? The reality is that Business for Social Responsibility has become a public relations organization for big corporations. The only criteria for membership -- you have to be big and loaded. The hijacking is now complete. Laury Hammel knows what happened. He was present at the creation. Business for Social Responsibility was his idea in the late 1980s. Hammel owns a string of health clubs in Boston. Hammel wanted BSR to help business become more socially responsible, but also to engage in the public policy debate. "We were sick and tired of having the Chamber of Commerce being the voice for business," Hammel said. So, he started the group, and brought in such luminaries as Arnold Hiatt, former CEO of Stride Rite. But at a board meeting of Business for Social Responsibility in 1993 in Cape Cod, there was a showdown between those who wanted the group to remain a voice in the public policy debate and those who wanted to stay out. Dunn told the board that he would become president of BSR if the group stopped taking public policy positions. "Dunn didn't want anything to do with influencing government policy," Hammel said. "Dunn believed that we would never change the world if we didn't get big corporations behind us. And we would never get them on board if we kept our foot in the public policy arena." Hammel lost the battle with Dunn over allowing big corporations into the organization. Dunn then asked Hammel to resign from the board. Hammel refused. So he was forced out. "Dunn said he wasn't going to renominate me to the board because I didn't have money or stature -- I wasn't a big corporation," Hammel said. Hammel is very fond of Arnold Hiatt, the former CEO of Stride-Rite, and a founding member of BSR. Hiatt is still a member of the board of Business for Social Responsibility. "He's an icon, one of my heroes," Hammel said. "But he's not in charge. It's Robert Dunn who is the driving force." Hammel believes that Dunn's strategy of trying to change large corporations from within is bound to fail. "Dunn has an incorrect analysis," Hammel said. "Take Wal-Mart for example." Wal-Mart is a member of BSR. "The only thing you can do to Wal-Mart is to do what they did with Standard Oil and take it apart," Hammel said. "There is an inherent flaw in the way they operate. When you make a change in Wal-Mart, you make a difference. But ultimately, you are going to fail because the business plan is flawed." After being forced out of BSR, Hammel continued to organize local BSR chapters around the country. Back then, the local chapters still had a voice in the national. "But in 2000, the national BSR sent us a letter. There was no discussion. They just said -- we are eliminating all local chapters," Hammel said. "They told us that BSR was going to spend all of its time on big corporations." Hammel has gone on help jump-start a new organization -- the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (www.livingeconomies.org). The message -- buy local, buy independent. "When I first formed BSR, I thought all businesses had the same interests in common," Hammel said. "Then I realized that big corporations didn't want to be with us. And we realized that our interests were different." "The first allegiance of big public companies is to their stockholders," Hammel said. "Most of these big companies have to cater to the whims of the stockholders. That puts them in conflict with the consumer, community and the environment. Very few big companies can buck that stockholder dictatorship." "Second is -- where do you live? Are you locally owned? If yes, then you are connected to the community," Hammel said. "Companies like Starbucks (a BSR member) are creating a homogenized culture. They are homogenizing cultures all over the world. We want to see locally owned coffee shops." "We have done several studies showing that for every $100 spent at a local independent company -- $45 goes to the community," Hammel said. "If you spend the $100 at the corporate chain like Starbucks, only $13 goes to the community." The last BSR conference that Hammel attended was in 2001 in Seattle. This was 10 years after he founded BSR as his dream. "I sat down at a table and noticed three guys with name tags that said Philip Morris and Company," Hammel said. "I asked these guys -- you are not with the cigarette company, are you? And they said -- 'yes, we are with the holding company.'" "I said to myself -- these guys are members of BSR? They make products that kill people. What is this?" That was the last conference he attended. Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime Reporter. Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Multinational Monitor. Mokhiber and Weissman are co-authors of On the Rampage: Corporate Predators and the Destruction of Democracy (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press). © 2005 Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman |
| Eco Website | 0 comments |
| 4 Nov 2005 @ 07:50 This is a wonderful site I just was made aware of Tree Hugger |