Greenwashing Debunkers Club

Julio F. Campos Corporations are based on three pillars when presenting their solutions aiming at achieving sustainability: Increase efficiency and use of new technologies; Recycling of waste for reuse and; Change in the production process for the use of renewable and clean sources. Although corporations depend on these approaches to maintain their financial health in the face of an increasing demand for sustainability, we will see that from the environmental and social point of view, these solutions can often be mere palliatives and can not be sustainable if there is, in fact, no reduction in exploitation resources. Increase Efficiency Paradox William Stanley Jevons, in 1865, as postulated in "The Question of Coal," observed that as less coal was used to produce a single product, due to the increase in the efficiency of its use, the surplus coal allowed the expansion the production of that particular product, or other products, with lower prod

Julio F. Campos Which careers will provide the best employability in the future? What should I choose to work with? What should I study? Those questions are getting more common on a daily basis as unemployment rates soar through every country in the world. Although unemployment is an increasing concern amongst the overall population its causes are raising governments concerns worldwide due to its potential catastrophic social and economical consequences and the fact that no economical model seems to be able to handle the problem. While many solutions are being proposed, from economic degrowth to less working hours, none have yet addressed the main problem behind the lack of available jobs. That problem lies at the population itself, or more precisely, the overpopulation problem. Independently of its causes, intrinsic population growth in underdeveloped countries or increase migration to developed countries, the constant population growth results in an increasing de

Julio F. Campos The Jevons' Paradox has been focus of attention in recent years due to its apparent conflict with eco-efficiency concept and as consequence has generated distinct reactions against it, and for it. The paradox is crucial when we face a corporation advertising of a more efficient process,  energy efficient products , sustainable use of energy or resources. It is, as we will see, also the first consideration that must be made when we ask " how can we be more sustainable". Here it is presented why that the idea that Jevons' Paradox is only related to energy is a misunderstanding, since the paradox wasn’t postulated referencing to the energy use but to the use of energetic resources, coal in the case. As postulated by Jevons in 1865 book “The Coal Question”: “ Whatever, therefore, conduces to increase the efficiency of coal, and to diminish the cost of its use, directly tends to augment the value of the steam-engine, and to enlarge the

Sustainability roots are the words “ability” and “sustain”, therefore the ability to sustain. In the case of ecological sustainability, the ability to sustain a ecological system or social sustainability, as the ability to sustain a social system. The idea of sustainability has become over the years so disseminated through so many different areas and so little attention has been given to its real meaning that it is often confused with the traditional definition of sustainable development, i.e., use our resources without compromise the needs of future generations, which is the result of sustainability. To fully understand this “ability to sustain” it must be brought back some dimensions to the concept that are related to how long that ability can be maintained, how it is maintained   or lost, and the systemic configuration need for its existence. This paper brings back the sustainability concept to its more broad definition and some considerations on how the lack its c

Julio F. Campos Bioplastics have occupied a prominent place in the petrochemical industry as the solution to the problem of dependence on fossil fuels. Moreover, the strong environmental appeal due to its natural renewable origin makes it the main product in the sustainability policy debate. Its Life Cicle Analysis, however, shows that the truth is just the opposite. Their production demands uniformity of raw material, which can only be obtained (to meet the market demand) through large scale monocultures, which are responsible for their implementation, among other impacts, for the extinction of local biodiversity (irreversible), To which it only increases as demand for productive area increases. It can be argued that waste or by-products from agricultural processes are used, and therefore no significant impact is added to the stage of production of the raw material. It is important to remember that both the gasoline was waste discarded from the production of kerosene unti