Greenwashing Debunkers Club

(C) Rabitty Julio Campos That sounds like a typical clickbait title you may think, but in fact, the idea of fast fashion is a myth as we’ll see, but maybe not for the reasons that one may think about. Fast fashion is not new, been there since ever, but its use to define a line that can’t be crossed between sustainability and unsustainability is brand new (no pun intended). Some common characteristics are generally used to define it, such as: Cheap. Low turnaround time between collections. Trendy. Low-quality materials leading to the need for constant replacement. The use of cheap labor. All of that fits the objective of the business. Sell as much as possible, as fast as possible to profit as much as possible. At the opposite side of that line, we have the trendy (let it sink a bit) sustainable side of the industry pledging to provide fashionable products with environmental and social responsibility. Focusing on natural, high-quality material, they offer cloth...

Julio F. Campos The latest trend in the fashion industry,  sustainability is on the hype and widely celebrated by fashion corporations, concerned consumers, designers and whoever wants to save the planet. However, if the electronics industry is the father of planned obsolescence, fashion is doubtless the mother, releasing season after season new collections to allow the engaged audience to keep up with the last tendencies.  Who wants to be kept out of the latest tendencies after all? Like all the other movements towards sustainability, those engaged with the fashion also follows the same set of beliefs used by the rest of business. Optimize the production process to reduce its impact, and; Recycle. So the actions are focused on the start and the end of the process. But is that all? That's the most relevant question and to answer that it is necessary to bring to the reader the statement that explains why those actions are not enough and usually are not ...

www.intellectualtakeout.org Julio F. Campos With excerpts from the Guardian " How formula milk firms target mothers who can least afford it " Recently I was discussing the role of price over the consumerism that is collapsing our planet's systems. Some argued that the low prices are the more important driving force behind what people consumes, or better, how much they consume, and since corporations only produce to attend the consumer demand, the former would have a more impact of resources depletion than corporations. The basis of that logic is that consumers consume because corporations offer low prices products. I argue that the issue is a bit more complex and deep than that. First of all, both consumers and corporations are guilt for the environmental degradation. To define who’s more important is irrelevant. Prices under the consumer perspective. The first step is to dismember the consume into its two ramifications: The consume of needed go...

Julio F. Campos Recently I was asked about which environmental friendly technologies or products we need to invent for a more sustainable society . Although a simple question, with a simple answer but complex explanation, it is indeed the single most important question that one could ask. The answer is plain simple: none. The reason behind both the question and the answer, however, demands a not so simple explanation.   Let's start with the question that is the root of what was asked:    Why do we need more technology? The concept that the technology development could improve human society development was introduced in the first two decades of the twentieth century and later used to describe the works of the economist Thorstein Bunde Veblen.   Its idea was resumed by the engineer William H. Smyth with the introduction of the technocracy concept, which was could be resume to  "the rule of the people made effective through the agency of their serva...

Julio F. Campos After my last post , I received a most interesting reader comment about why everything about sustainability is so complicated and formal. As an example, the reader presented the example do Stephen Hawking, (hence the post title), to which I could add an enormous list of other scientists that are able to translate their most complicated researches into easy to understand way for the scientific illiterate community. However, the problem is that being a multidisciplinary field, sustainability demands the explanation of a series of concepts from a large number of scientific fields. Which is time-consuming when considered the vast range of knowledge levels of the audience. It's not impossible though. Paradoxically sustainability, or better, what to do to be sustainable can actually be put through only two sentences. Here they are: To explain sustainability to corporations: "There is no such thing as sustainable growth" To explaining sustaina...

Hugo Penteado I did not even wanted to participate in 2017. I do not know who chose the unfortunate 360-degree term for the conference, but it's perfect, the conference made it clear that we spin, spin, spin and never advance. In fact, we are much worse than when this whole movement began 20 years ago. Sustainability that does not change anything is worse than not doing any sustainability, just because it creates a sense that something is being done. It is not. The sustainability trophies continue to be sewage in cities, dumps, Vale disaster in Minas, Gulf of Mexico disaster, Alberta, deforestation for monoculture, large-scale agrochemicals decimating biodiversity and insects indispensable to life, accelerated climate change, extreme concentration and uncontrolled income and wealth, uninterrupted pollution, extinction of accelerated life, etc. There is not a single good indication in all this, despite so much conference and beliefs. In general, the lectures were empty, wit...

Julio F. Campos Since the invention of Bakelite in 1907 plastic residues or products has being cumulatively thrown into rivers, and consequently oceans.  The consequence is that today there is not a single beach in the world where plastic debris is not present. After the air pollution, this is probably our second global presence footprint.      For over a hundred year we are polluting the oceans, but the problem of the great garbage patches in Pacific hit the press and social media in the last few years the problem gained public attention. That it was discovered back in 1988 and we stood for years without caring about it is of little concern. The first large scale attempt to deal with the problem and try to remove the plastic was conceived by Boyan Slat back in 2011, who started a crowdfunding initiative and it is s yet on prototype testing phase, still years from being 24/7 effective on real open sea conditions. Due to lack of investment. ...