Greenwashing Debunkers Club

Julio F. Campos* Back in 1994, John Elkington  coined  the Triple Bottom Line (here referred to as Elkington’s TBL, or eTBL) concept, which was rapidly adopted by the market and is now widely referred to as the accounting pillar when it comes to corporate sustainability. The TBL states that a corporation system can only be sustainable if its environmental, social and economic impacts are managed to stay as close as possible to a balance between its three components. Although it seems a straight forward approach, he decided that TBL needed a  recall , for it wasn’t being used as he intended it to be. What went wrong? We can narrow down to two reasons why a recall, with an explanation on how it supposed to work, was needed. The first one was business appropriation adapting the TBL (here referred to as business TBL, or bTBL) to a more palatable conceptual structure. Purposely the first paragraph, in contrast with the second one, of this text presented t...

  BBC Julio F. Campos  I think it is unnecessary to comment about the recent tragedy caused by Vale in Brumadinho, which has so far resulted in a hundred deaths. What is questioned here is the validity, effectiveness or even the connection with the reality of corporate sustainability reports, in the case of GRI, of which Vale holds the Gold Seal. But a brief historical review of events is required. Back in 2013 Samarco, a joint venture between Vale and BHP was aware of a report warning of problems in Bento Rodrigues, which indicated the risk of its dam. In 2015 the risk became a reality with the rupture of the dam resulting in the death of 15 people, the destruction of the Rio Doce and the contamination of the coastal region. So far the survivors of the tragedy still suffer from the company's unwillingness to assume its indemnity responsibility. The previous report of 2013 pointing out the risk of the dam was rebutted by BHP. The direct consequence of the...

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  What can we learn from Elon Musk to have more sustainable business models? "Sustainability costs dear" "Innovation costs dear" Cost. The first word we hear from companies when it comes to sustainability and innovation. Elon Musk is today the most well-known and envied example of success in innovation. Paving the roads of three major breakthroughs, electric vehicles, autonomous vehicles, and their revolutionary rocket generation, will be listed in history books at least as a new Von Braun, this one responsible for putting the man on the moon while Musk is the name that will take us to Mars. Many entrepreneurs want to know the secret behind their success, but few actually look for the information that explains it. As we shall see, it is simpler than it seems. But what is the relationship with sustainability? What can Musk teach? Before we understand this, let's talk about two problems concerning the driving of companies, whic...

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...

Julio F. Campos In this article, I will discuss what qualities a professional need to work with sustainability. As a quick internet search results in a fair amount of similar texts, I decided to approach the topic through another bias. Easily someone will find recommendations on the profile considered ideal for acting in sustainability, however, this profile is the profile considered ideal by the corporate market. For this and other reasons, I will not address the profile of the corporate "sustainability" professional. I will not make a comparison between this professional and the profile sought by the market, a quick search on the internet allows to locate the latter. I leave it to the reader to make this self-critical analysis. I often see new graduates in various environmental areas unsatisfied with their jobs because they can not execute the proposals they know to be necessary, having to shape themselves to the needs of the company and not to sustainability. ...

Major household brands are selling everyday grocery staples containing palm oil produced using child labour, Amnesty International has claimed. From Josie Clarke, The Independent Online: Amnesty International report finds manufacturers using oil from Singapore-based company

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 My last article about the major issue of corporate sustainability professionals raised an interesting set of comments, especially the negatives ones, which indicated to me that I have touched the right spot. Here are presented the reasons behind that article. As many people, ever since childhood it was my desire to work close to the environment. Being raised close to nature made it a mere consequence. Growing up I understood that the environment was threatened by those “evil” corporations whose main objective was to explore and profit, no matter the consequences. However, as I began to actually do research on the problem while obtaining my scientific degrees on the sustainability field, I realized that that was a naïve perception for those corporations are not the worst problem that one faces when trying to work for a more sustainable world. Those “evil” corporations are not the problem. The enemy within is. The enemy within is that group of profession...

Julio F. Campos This article is dedicated to expose how the carbon credit market helps companies evade their responsibilities to the environment and the health of society in their environment. Nowadays when a corporation talks about environmental sustainability the first results presented is the reduction in carbon emissions. Although some of them achieve that reduction by moving to renewable sources but presenting only the results with higher reductions, not the whole life cycle, many use the carbon market to calculate their emissions reductions. The principle behind the carbon market is simple, the company A emits X tons of carbon, the company B grow biomass that sequesters that X tons, generating carbon credits. Company A buys company B carbon credits and neutralizes its carbon emissions. As exemplified by Dr. Katharine Hayhoe an interesting analogy to understand how this can be made is: Imagine that person A wants to loose weight and pays person B to go to...

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. ...

Julio F. Campos The circular economy for some years has been emerging as an alternative proposal to the current production model being embraced by a growing number of governments and companies. Its concept is to introduce into the production system feedback mechanisms similar to those existing in natural systems, eliminating the linear explore-produce-discard characteristic in favor of a structure based on reuse and recycling cycles, thus reducing both the volume of discarded waste and the of exploited natural inputs. Basic model of the structure of the Circular Economy Encompassing different initiatives, such as cradle-to-cradle , biomimetics or industrial ecology , in this scenario the environment would cease to be a mere reservoir of resources/waste, but an adjunct to the economic process, providing proposals for the development of sustainable economic solutions. However, when we have in mind the finite characteristic of our planet resources, for the circular econ...