Greenwashing Debunkers Club

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

Worldpress.com / Foodtank.com Hugo Penteado Julio F. Campos The list of the ten most sustainable countries on the planet varies depending on the source researched but is basically made up of European countries, with the Nordic countries usually at the top of the list, traditionally headed by Sweden. Variations of the countries that make up the list also include Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Recently, the University of Leeds study " A good life for all within planetary boundaries ", analyzing our ability to live with adequate quality of life within the limits defined by the planet pointed out that, based on the current models of growth,  of the 150 countries, only Vietnam would be close to achieving the ideal results, with levels of resource consumption within the planet's carrying capacity, although it still needs to develop its social issues. (The reader can review the status of each of these countries here ). The study concludes that the search f

Julio F. Campos Throughout human history, the careless use of natural resources has proven to result in catastrophic shifts to many civilizations. Overuse of natural resources is known to have played the major role in the collapse of ancient civilizations. Easter Island, being the most famous of them, presents the ultimate example of how the mindless use of local, limited, resources could drive the end of an entire civilization. The Mayans overpopulation and deforesting and overexploitation of local land, with a resulting drought, are another example of how the belief in the resources infinitude can lead a pungent civilization to disaster. Angkor Wat, one of the most advanced Asian ancient civilizations, with is marvelous water control systems, upon which the entire civilization relied, collapsed due to external climate events leading to floods and droughts, resulting in the end of this entire civilization. Even the great Roman empire was at the end subject to its soil

Julio F. Campos I have been quite often asked questions about pollution. What it is, it's different types, what products are considered to be pollutants, how the environment deals with it or what can we do to prevent it. Here I'll briefly answer those questions explaining what pollution from the ecological perspective is. How, why, when an ecosystem is considered polluted and what can it do about it. But first, it is necessary to bring two fundamental ecosystem structural characteristics. A) The carrying capacity Carrying capacity is the capacity of any ecosystem to sustain a number of individuals of a given species. That could the number of different species, the number of predators, the volume of human use of its resources and, as we will see, the quantity of waste that it can process through its recycling species. As such, every ecosystem has an intrinsic set of carrying capacities for its innumerous species which are derived from its complex internal inter

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 servants, the scient

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