Don’t mention the Poor

If there is one childhood memory that stands out from all the others, it is this from my teenage years: I had just got a new (very dishy) boyfriend who’s father was Indian, mother Caucasian Brit. I myself was white middle-class, living in a very white middle class UK Home County (just to set the scene, you may have guessed what’s coming..). People who had been friends for years and never expressed an opinion on the subject before, began to call me abusive names and came up with all sorts of opinions about why ‘these people’ were OK but each should stick to his/her ‘own’. That didn’t hurt me per se, but racism is something I have never been able to stomach in any form (to put it extremely mildly), and now I saw a whole new side of people that I had previously been completely oblivious to, which devastated & shocked me to the core.

Why mention this now? Well I feel like I have this week had a very similar experience, but this time the ‘boyfriend’ was my introducing into conversation the idea that one might want to think twice before spending money with a company who were known to support oppressive labour regimes in their supply chains. At first it was laughed off and I was told I was ‘funny’ & ‘unique’, but when, with one eyebrow raised, I questioned why it was funny, those in the group started to shift uncomfortably, I was told I was entitled to my own opinion, and when I offered to show documentation to support what I had suggested, I was told very forthrightly – “No thanks!“

Well! Why do these concepts evoke such a powerful response? I am particularly interested in this group of people because they do not live selfish lives and very often go out of their way to help those around them both financially and with their time. They are intelligent, have religious backgrounds and profess to care about welfare and the poor. They are also not short of money themselves. I still live in a white, middle class UK (albeit different) Home County.

Firstly, there is the “No thanks!”, fingers in ears, ‘la-la-la’, I don’t want to know what is going on, because if I don’t know, I’m not doing anything wrong. There is a fundamental underlying thought pattern that says: ‘What I do doesn’t hurt anybody else. What I do in my own life is my business.‘ This is a concept known as ‘privatisation’, and is utterly flawed. We live in society, and society is more interconnected now than it ever has been. Every action has a consequence. In this instance, the decision to ignore the facts laid down in front of you and continue to do business with companies who deliberately turn a blind eye to

• the Worst Forms of Child Labour,
• to health and safety hazzards which are life threatening and maiming,
• to labour conditions and pay which force whole communities to live in abject squalor, without adequate housing and well, well below the bread line,
• and even to ‘bonded labour’ (in other words slavery),

supports these companies and ensures that these appalling living (and sometimes dying) conditions perpetuate. In our society there is a malaise which is the complete failure to think things through. As a society in general, we must start to recognise the responsibility we have for our actions.

Then there is the complete lack of comprehension of the power of consumption. ‘I am only spending 75p on this Tshirt. What possible difference can that make to anybody?’ That Tshirt would not be up for sale if it did not make a difference. That retailer is making a profit out of it, hard as it may seem to believe. And that profit is at the expense of a good many people involved in the supply chain. You too, are profiting from their labours, and in so doing condeming them to the conditions outlined above, if you think it through. Your consumer power is the most powerful weapon you have to combat these evils, and you can use it on a daily basis. Your money is the loudest voice these retailers hear, and at the moment all they hear is ‘the public want their Tshirts cheap, and lots of them. And they dont care how they get them.’ They are not hearing – we are holding you accountable for what happens in your supply chains. In short – People Matter!

I would also like to see an examination of the view that: ‘I have a right to cheap clothing* {*insert here any other product of dubious origins which is freely available on the market}. Do we? Yes, I have four children to clothe; and yes they trash and grow out of their clothing at a rate of knots; and yes I resent spending my hard-earned cash on these things that don’t last and are not appreciated; and yes, I do not have a lot of disposable income after the mortgage and bills are paid. But I have a mortgage, I have access to all the utilities, I have a disposable income for goodness sake! I’m rich! What right do I have to demand that someone else should lay down their life to supply me with items which, when compared, are luxuries. They are items that will never be afforded in these communities in Bangladesh, or Western Africa, or vast vast swaithes of communities across the globe. Why do I have the right, at the expense of others basic rights, and in some cases Human Rights?

Phew! I am aware that what I have written this evening is very emotive, but I hope it is also provoking. I have heard it said that we are a generation who are very well schooled but completley uneducated. Socrates said: the unexamined life is not worth living. Let us continue to examine, adjust, learn, and avoid at all costs getting our ears full of sand!

How Green is Your High Street?

Just watched the Money Program’s “How Green is Your Street” on BBC2. I have to say, it wasn’t too bad as factual TV goes these days. We are suffering from a bit of Greenwash here in the UK, as the supermarkets try to salve our consciences. As you jump into your low carbon transport to the shops, what are they doing for the environment?

We have access to a range of produce and products beyond our grandparents wildest dreams, but at what cost do we have all this nice stuff? This episode of the Money Program dived in to try and provide some answers. A good range of issues were touched on in the program, from the rubbish a family produces each week to the energy used by the supermarkets.

Marks & Spencer lead the charge, with Plan A. A few days later, Tescos launched their initiative. Then Boots, Asda, Sainsbury… even the banks are getting on board. Can you say ‘bandwagon’?

The program set out to reveal who are the greenest, although the careful viewer may have walked away with the complexity of the issues throbbing in their head. I mean that in a good way. Why are the high street retailers doing it? Because of customers. They are convinced that their customers are demanding that they go green. Consumers 1, retailers nil. Or perhaps not.

Marks & Spencers are spending £200 million (about $400 million) on Plan A, while the program points out that Tescos are spending about £500 million. It is a shame that M&S haven’t answered any of our email questions about Plan A – so much for interacting or being accountable to your consumers guys!

Do companies risk alienating their customers with all this ‘green stuff’. From the GfK NOP poll of 1,000 people , it would seem not. The majority wanted shops to go green. However consumers were also cynical: 49% said it was all hype, whilst only 19% believed their claims had substance.

What is the high street doing? The leading shops are looking to cut air pollution. The BBC calculated ‘food miles’ how far the food for a family had travelled – 100,000 miles! Even one individual item had travelled 11,000 miles. That is a huge amount of aviation fuel. South African strawberrys are flown 6,000 miles to get to our shops, but this is where the issue gets complicated for us at ResponsAble. Tesco’s is marking this travelled goods with a plane sticker, but people avoiding these goods has concequence for foreign growers and workers in poor countries. Each of the workers at the featured South African farm is supporting families and improving the local economy. Tesco is reducing reliance on air transport (aiming for <1% from 2% today), other supermarkets are looking at alternative transport.
Chris Goodall, the author of How to Live a Low-carbon Life: The Individual’s Guide to Stopping Climate Change popped up a few times, so that sounds like a book for our wish list!

The program touched on local sources, featuring a farmer suppling ASDA, only 8 miles from farm to supermarket – it looked like a free range farm, the chickens looked happy! But British produce may not be better for the environment. For example, tomatoes grown in the UK have to make use of heating. The program found a very interesting Tomato farm in the UK that uses excess heat from an adjoining sugar plant to support the growing. Very cool, or should I say very warm?

Tescos claims it will eventually ‘carbon label’ every product. They will be spending 5 million pounds on this. I have seen this covered elsewhere and it still makes me groan. Boots have tried this (and were featured on the program), they only managed to do it for two products, with a team of 5 people! It took months! They estimate it cost them 250,000 points (nb Boots worked with the Carbon Trust – more on that in a future post).

There was a magic moment during a street interview “carbon foot print – what’s that?” said a bemused person on the street. I have to say, I think I know where he’s coming from. How about less jargon and more on using less of our planet’s limited resources. 72% of the people in the poll said that retailers weren’t doing enough to cut back on waste. Their expert said that supermarkets could be more ambitious in reducing packaging. I would really like to see all of the results of the poll and how the questions were constructed – how about publishing it on your website BBC?

There was a good hat-tip to an observation we have made: We are going back to what green grocers used to do! Farmer’s markets have been doing this for ages – locally sourced, open goods, with little to no packaging

Riverford Organic were featured, with their fruit and vegboxes. They have done away with almost all outer packaging. They use ‘nature’s packaging’ – by leaving on outer leaves on etc to protect the product. They have also developed 100% recycled paper compostable packaging for where they have to use it. What was not mentioned was that they also collect their boxes for re-use.
Tesco’s didn’t come across too well. They covered Tesco’s experiment with electric delivery vans (3 of them) and their store with Photovoltaic cells – that just powered the tills. How about doors on the fridges guys? Tesco’s are aiming to 1/2 the carbon footprint of their buildings by 2020. Does the increase in efficiency offset the growth? Tescos is opening hundreds of new stores. It is a huge shame that the BBC didn’t feature Waitrose, I feel I have to redress the balance somehow, by doing a post on them. Waitrose seem years ahead, but weren’t mentioned at all. Co-op came out very well, they are using 98% green energy today.

There was good treatment of some of the less convincing activities by some players. For example, Barclays Breathe card, which is made from recycled plastic and donates money to global projects. Ah, tokenism at its best. Barclays do source 50% of their power from renewable sources, so there is good stuff going off there too.

Some players are still using Carbon offsetting. As the program points out, this was very fashionable in the 90’s, but is now very controversial. Jutta Kill from FERN spoke well, is carbon offsetting a license to pollute? Some of the newer ideas sounded interesting with good responsible outcomes, for example solar panels for 3rd world projects. However, carbon offsetting is a distraction from the main task: preserving our precious natural resources.

There was a piece was about shops being more ethical, this was very superficial as all it covered was cod farming in Scotland! This is perhaps almost offensive to those working to reduce bonded labour and poor working conditions – issues that weren’t even mentioned.

A well put together and informative program, kudos to the BBC. However, I think there will be some very cross supermarkets and some upset/unpopular PR people too. I must go and lay down, my head is dizzy from all the spin.