One thing they have in common; they claim whatever they are selling is more ethical than what everyone else is selling, and using their sticker will also make you part of the 1%. Literally. A claim promoted by an organization that sells certification stickers, 1% For The Planet, is that companies 'certified' by them or similar groups have a 70% chance of better growth than companies who don't.
Very few consumers make buying choices based on the social justices issues of companies, or any other certification they pay to get. The 1% can afford to pay for companies certified by The 1% for lots of other reasons and that is where the big money is. You just have to get a little lucky, and maybe be deceptive, like the Sunday lawn care company discussed below.
Certifications make total business sense, in that case. They just make no health, environmental, or science sense. They are a marketing claim to sell a product.
And that product is for the wealthy, not all of Earth. So if you really care about Earth Day, pass by Non-GMO Project and all the other mercenary nonsense that companies sell to companies to charge more.
USDA Organic, Fair Trade Certified, B Corp Certification(1), 1% for the Planet et al. are simply arbitrary marketing designations. How can they claim they cause more revenue companies? Well, because that is marketing.
"Organic" for example, was created by President Bill Clinton to help those using old pesticides feel valid because it was endorsed by the government. He even forced USDA to allow them to create their own panel, stuffed with marketing executives and lobbyists, that decided what was "organic."(2)
Alternative Eggs can show how many chemicals are in real eggs and the money will pour in. Credit: James Kennedy
It took off as America got wealthier and is now a $130 billion Big Food juggernaut.(3) So big that such an inefficient process could not meet demand, so they began to import 'organic' food from China and Russia, which is why up to 25 percent of imported organic food is just regular food with a higher price and a sticker. Once the money got large enough, this mercenary effort cascaded out to other companies, like Non-GMO Project selling stickers for $3,000 each on 65,000 products despite barely a handful of foods being GMO at all.
Fair Trade is just as ridiculous. Is it really 'fair' to deny money to farmers who can't afford your certification? Fair Trade companies do that. They are the gatekeepers, so if only large wealthy farms in South America can afford it, yayyyyy capitalism and sorry peasants. Are you really supporting companies that prioritize environmental sustainability, social responsibility, and ethical behavior if you penalize poor brown and black people, which every one of these marketing efforts does? No, but the products are for rich, white progressives so if it has the sticker that provides social currency with their tribe, the truth doesn't matter.
Like Earth Day itself, which was intentionally (and controversially, since it was the Cold War) placed on the birthday of the violent USSR communist Vlad Lenin.(4)
Would Lenin be pleased at his American descendants using Earth Day to get rich? Communists seem to love mass-murdering dictatorships so perhaps he would love them back. People with common sense not so much. Not about him, and not about the propaganda of certification companies taking credit for the success of other companies buying their stickers. Critical thinkers know they are intentionally framing correlation arrows all wrong - unless the goal is simply to be more profitable so you buy a meaningless sticker that lets you charge a premium.
1% for the Planet touts its big success as chemical outfit Sunday, listing its certification as why the lawn care business has grown 32X and that the corporation has given away $1 million dollars.
What a terrible, tone-deaf claim when the economy is in a morass. Inflation is rampant, food costs have gone up 44% during the Biden administration, and this company is bragging that it makes so much profit they give it away. If Intel declared record profits and threw employees a pizza party, we'd all ridicule that. Sunday is no different, nor is 1% For The Planet.
What chemicals are in their lawn spray? Detergent to help their Pyrethrin interact with plants. If you believe that glyphosate causes cancer, as Sunday suggests in their 'never' narrative, how can you use pyrethrin, when the exact same epidemiology links it to cancer and Parkinson's Disease? I assume getting cancer from your pesticide Certified Ethically is some solace.(5)
If Sunday or any company really cares about people, they'd tell those purchasing that if they show proof of a charitable donation, or time spent volunteering, they'll get an equivalent discount on lawn chemicals. Instead, consumers pay 50% in taxes on their earnings, then they overpay for a chemical company that bought a 1% sticker, then the CEO of the company gives away a million bucks, which is a write-off so they won't have to pay taxes on it, and pats himself on the back.
All while quality of life has plummeted for the other 99% of the country.
Happy Earth Day. Enjoy that sticker. Lenin would be proud.
NOTES:
(1) Sometimes the selling is to potential employees so you can pay them less than other companies, like with B Corp certifications invented in 2015.
(2) That is why you don't have to be "organic" to be "certified organic", you can be 95 percent organic, you can even include dozens and dozens of synthetic scientific ingredients and still buy a sticker from any of the 80(!) companies that immediately sprang into existence to certify any farmers who filled out paperwork stating they had stopped using pesticides and fertilizers that are better for the environment and only used more toxic ones from the past.
(3) So large Whole Foods no longer has to lie and claim organic food uses no pesticides, like they used to post on their website. History is written by the winners, so 40 years from now Whole Foods will claim they never did that, like the communists behind Earth Day now claim it was not about Lenin, nor did they endorse the Global Cooling phenomenon they endorsed until the USSR collapsed.
(4) Who overthrew Czar Nicholas II and then had him and his children murdered after he surrendered 25 percent of the country to Germany in World War I and people started asking for the incompetent King back. Incompetence was better than malevolence, after all, which may be a lesson in 2024 America as well.
(5) It does not, because mice are not little people with pyrethrin any more than they are with glyphosate or pickle juice or hot tea, all things that IARC has "correlated" to cancer without ever showing it. It is just weird to see some company huffily declare they will never use glyphosate - and then proudly state they use something just as harmful for people and worse for the environment.
Comments