Greenwashing Debunkers Club

Julio F. Campos Originally published in 2018 Recently  Ambev presented its product AMA, which is nothing more than bottled water with a sustainability appeal based on the proposal to donate 100% of its profit from the product sale as a Cause Marketing approach (How Cause Marketing is another way to divert attention to the real problem of consumerism and its hidden costs, as keep consumers consuming or “pretending” to aid to solve a problem created by the market itself, won’t be discussed here). What will be discussed is: a) does a company such as Ambev needs to create a new product to present itself as sustainable?; b) how sustainable it really is when it comes to water, probably the most valuable natural resource today? AMA As stated AMA is a brand of bottled water which has 100% of its profit donated to a program aimed to deliver water to isolated communities in Brazil. With a US$0.54 / 500 ml price tag, it fits within market range for bottled waters.    With a w

The Sustainable Development Report (1) published its 2020 report ranking the countries based on how close they are to achieve the 17 SDGs, available here . The index purpose is to track "country performance on the 17 SDGs, as agreed by the international community in 2015 with equal weight to all 17 goals" and its value "signifies a country’s position between the worst (0) and the best or target (100) outcomes" . The higher the country index, the closer it is to achieve the best SDG outcome. But how realistic this index reflects the real development of sustainable actions? In one of the most significant works in the last years, developed at Leeds University, "A Good Life For All Within Planetary Boundaries" (2) ( interactive site here ) mapped the sustainability performance of a series of countries was estimated using the doughnut economics model , which provides an indication, for each country, on how close it is to the ideal social and environmental e

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