As part of a continued look into ways that corporations are using the effort for a cleaner planet as a smokescreen for their own “less than clean” practices, we’re going to look at possibly the biggest example…

Passing the buck to you.

You can stop global warming by separating your papers and plastics!

You can save the coral reefs by using paper straws!

You can save the rainforests by requesting electronic receipts!

In a page stolen from Smokey the Bear, it’s all your responsibility to stop the looming disaster.

Of course, doing something is better than doing nothing, but when these calls to “save the planet” are coming from the world’s biggest polluters, it’s time to take a step back…

The fact of the matter is, the damage being done by the top 100 polluting companies can not be undone, no matter how many people take the bus to work.

In fact, those same companies make up 71% of historical greenhouse gas emissions.

The same companies that are telling you that it’s your responsibility to keep the planet clean.

Possibly the most hollow campaign to date was the recent war against plastic straws.

Following a company-wide ban by Starbucks, other companies (and even whole states) began to follow suit.

Considering that less than 1% of the plastic polluting the oceans is made up of these offending straws, and that Starbucks’ solution was to use more plastic for a strawless cup, the cracks start to show in this narrative.

The coffee chain’s attempts to shift responsibility to its consumers, while benefiting from the appearance of being a seemingly eco-friendly company, isn’t even the most absurd case of its kind.

Among the industries jumping on the straw-ban trend was cruise lines.

Several of the most popular cruise companies, like Disney and Carnival, eliminated the use of plastic straws on their cruise ships. A trivial move when you consider what a typical 3,000-passenger ship generates over the course of a one-week cruise:

• 1 million gallons of "gray water"
• 210,000 gallons of sewage
• 25,000 gallons of oily bilge water
• Over 100 gallons of hazardous or toxic waste
• 16 tons of solid waste
• Diesel exhaust emissions on similar to levels in high-density urban areas

This is one of many examples of how large corporations are trying to deflect their responsibility to you (it’s your straws), take credit for being “eco-friendly”, and do nothing at all for the environment.

Shop Smart

Similar to exaggerating individual pollution and deemphasizing industrial pollution is the idea of “ethical consumerism”.

“Voting with your wallet”, or using the free market to hold companies accountable for unethical practices is a responsibility that has been passed onto you, the consumer.

I’ll save you some trouble…

You don’t have enough hours in your day to figure out which companies are benefiting from child labor, or buying off government officials to pass legislation so they can keep dumping waste into the ocean.

Mostly because it’s pretty much all of them.

If only you were a more responsible consumer, right?

Also, even if you could sniff out the bad actors, it doesn’t make much of a difference anyway…

Take the example of the clothing brand Boohoo, who received negative press in 2020 for failing to pay minimum wage and having hazardous workplace conditions, which included life-threatening fire risks.

Then they saw their sales spike 45%...

Not only does “responsible consumerism” require too much and do too little, it lets the executives who have the ability to make changes off the hook.

If there’s always the court of public opinion to fall back on, the court of actual courts doesn’t need to worry so much.

But putting the emphasis on the consumer allows for the greatest eco-friendly smokescreen of all: greenwashing.

That, however, will be for next time.

With that, what are your thoughts on this? Do these “eco friendly trends” make a difference? What would keep big companies from passing the buck onto the consumer? Do you pay any attention to the business practices of the companies making the products you buy? Share your thoughts about this, or anything else at feedback@technologyprofits.com.