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.  ...

Julio F. Campos Disposable products such as plates, cups, and cutlery have been sold due to its practicality as a use-and-dispose option to doing the dishes. Although the idea was born back in 1908 to avoid the disease dissemination in hospitals due to sharing common recipients, it was after World War II and the development of the plastic industry that the disposable products reached the general public. Originally used for packaging, it was not long that the disposability concept reached other daily used products as we know today. In a world where, unfortunately, the time has become a most valuable commodity, the single-use idea was easy to sell, fastly getting public acceptance. It was not only until the recent years that the problem of such "practicality" has become known by the public. Although not new for environmental scientists, the plastic problem got popular worldwide attention after the media in recent years exposed the Great Pacific Garbage Patches (...

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 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 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...

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...