Surviving the Workday

Here’s a funny overview of how yogurt is marketed towards women, in particular, women who wear hoodies and have master’s degrees.

I am wearing a hoodie, and have a master’s degree, but fight the urge to eat the Yogurt.

Via Feministing

Can someone vouch that this device actually works? I’ve seen the videos. I’m amazed, and I’m envisioning my life without each weekend devouted to hair removal from all surfaces. If you have one, could you see if it is labeled with Made in China too? Yes? And that it doesn’t hurt the animal? I’d love this to be a solution to the German Shepherd hair problem.

 I’m not sure this post has anything to do with spirituality and the workplace. I’ll live with that.

Even though literally a quarter of my living relatives live in your lovely city of Toronto, I know nothing of your culture, especially this word, Timbit. And even finding out the meaning (donut hole), I fear you have picked up some management practices from your neighbors down south: fire first, ask questions later. You really can’t buy PR this bad. And, as always with a story from Consumerist, the comments are quite funny, including some folks waiting for the first person to blame the victim, a popular Consumerist commenter practice.

If you were to send your mother flowers rather than clipping them from your garden, you might give try California Organic Flowers. I sent ranunculus to my mom for her birthday, and due to my own zip code error, there were issues with them arriving on time, but California Organic Flowers sent another batch for free after I developed a relationship with Marc trying to track down the flowers, which became world travelers. Again, that was due to my error, not theirs. 

You can also see Marc below, which is funny only that my husband stumbled across this video when looking for information on organic cover crops, and not organic flowers.

And why would you even care if the flowers you send are organic? About 70% of the cut flowers in the U.S. are imported, and often from countries that use pesticides and fumigants that are banned in North America. Furthermore, there are some serious labor issues with who cuts the flowers:

Meanwhile, two-thirds of Columbian and Ecuadorian workers suffer from problems associated with pesticide exposure, including nausea, conjunctivitis, neurological disease, reproductive problems, and birth defects. Plus, the International Labor Organization estimates that 20 percent of flower workers in Ecuador are children, who are even more vulnerable to hazards these chemicals pose.

I’ve been reading No Free Refills about packaging issues in fast food, and wondering about my own pet gift basket issues. Most people who took our survey thought that dog shampoo was a critical component of a Welcome Home gift basket, purchased on the adoption of a new dog. And, in my personal experience with Mia, the absolute first thing we did when taking her home from the shelter was give her a bath as she was coated in urine. And there are arguments using dog shampoos with essential oils to repel fleas and ticks and  rather than human shampoo or dish washing liquid. So I’m sold on dog soap.

Dog shampoos come in solid bars with little wrapping except a slip of paper and in plastic bottles in liquid form. The bar is much harder to use, especially to work up a lather, and might be especially hard with a dog unused to baths. But the liquid soap comes in a bottle, which may or may not be recyclable, depending on where you live. So we have usability issues that bring us to liquid soap, but packaging issues that bring us to bar soap.

Any helpful thoughts?

In a battle regarding paying a living wage to tomato pickers, a Burger King VP used his middle school daughter’s email to trash talk the tomato pickers. I don’t use this word often, but what a L O S E R.

Not Made in China lists products that are not made in China. Many are made in the US; some are made elsewhere with fair trade regulations in place. Lots of kids stuff.

A restaurant review in Philadelphia has spurred a debate about the ethics of tipping. Or perhaps it’s about the ethics of a restaurant paying above what it has to in order to confiscate tips from its employees. It claims to be using the tips for remodeling. And, it’s important to note that customers don’t know that the tip doesn’t go to the server.

This is kind of a fun graphic from Good Magazine. You can see that most “organic” snack brands sold in big supermarkets have giant parent companies with names you’ve heard of. The great tragedy of my life occurred several years ago when I found out from a friend that Seeds of Change is really owned by M&M/Mars. Not the end of the world, but I prefer to buy from Johnny’s Seeds now. Just don’t tell me they’re owned by Halliburton. Please.

The Presbyterian Church has an official position on sweatshops, and they’re going sweat-free with their own group Sweat-Free Ts:

Sweat-Free Ts is inspired by our biblical faith and call to discipleship—as well as growing consumer demand within the modern-day garment industry for responsibly sourced products. “Clean clothes” and anti-sweatshop campaigns have also helped shape our work. Advocates in many places are encouraging manufacturers to produce goods in ways that respect the dignity, safety and rights of workers. There are many ways concerned Presbyterians can support our sisters and brothers in Christ who work hard on the production end of the garment chain.

Resources

Sweat-free Ts

Shop with a Conscience Consumer Guide

New American Dream’s Sweatshop Free Clothing

Via Church Marketing Sucks

Within the last couple of months, I’ve developed an elaborate fantasy in which I return to college for the sole purpose of eating. Yes, the eating in college was good. At Smith, it was on China, and customized for my vegetarian tastes (as I was friends with Chef Glenn), and at Wesleyan, the food came in an enormous cafeteria where I could graze at my leisure, including from the longest salad bar in Connecticut.

That was then. This is now. I cannot afford to go to Smith or Wesleyan in my adult life (actually, I couldn’t afford it then either). Instead I simply have this elaborate fantasy made worse by an article in the New York Times, Menus with Pho and Lobster, that implies the food at private colleges, including Wesleyan, has simply become much better as they compete for top tier students by offering pumpkin chocolate muffins and everything else under the sun. A slideshow of upscale college food here here.  

Ah, regression. And, yes, there’s room for a whole deconstruction of my middle class childhood against the upper class education and food. So tasty though just to consider the food. Students, count your blessings, and pass the pumpkin chocolate muffins.

Apparently adidas employs workers in factories in China, and violates China’s labor laws as well as its own corporate standards. Violations of labor laws and corporate standards include the following:

1. Forcing workers to work more than 70 hours a week to earn minimum wage in China.

2. Cheating workers in other ways in regards to pay

3. Discriminating against male workers, who are assumed to be criminals unless they have a certificate from their hometown stating otherwise.

4. Stifling the creation of a union.

It really goes on and on, which is particularly distressing because adidas has supposedly been working on these issues along with Nike for years. adidas is a sponsor of the Olympics in Beijing with the slogan, “Nothing is Impossible.” Information on contacting adidas is available at adidas.com

Here’s an interesting thought for you if you visit a cafeteria today: apparently the cafeteria tray encourages you to buy more and frequently waste more. I suppose that’s obvious, but on college campuses, trayless cafeterias seem to be saving quite a bit of solid and liquid waste.

 Starting this semester, Alfred University, in New York, has gone to trayless in dining halls across campus, with the exception being for students with disabilities or those who need extra assistance. Green Alfred, a student group that promotes sustainable practices, along with others lobbied for the change.

Students ran a test last semester showing that on two days when trays weren’t offered, food and beverage waste dropped between 30 and 50 percent, according to Kathy Woughter, vice president for student affairs at Alfred. That amounts to about 1,000 pounds of solid waste and 112 gallons of liquid waste saved on a weekly basis, according to the college.

I went to one school where we served food onto our plates sans tray and there seemed to be far less waste than the school with the cafeteria trays. Not that anecdotal evidence proves anything; just mentioning it. And, of course, sometimes meal plans in college are all-inclusive, so you may pay the same no matter how much you eat (or waste).

Via Treehugger

 It used to be that when I saw a Mattel toy, I presumed that Mattel made the toy in a factory the company built and manages, with workers it hired and supervises, and that it would not be so crass or dumb as to save a fraction of a penny on a $30 toy by using lead paint.But Mattel and other businesses know something they are not willing to tells us:

In today’s globalized economy, top companies have lost control of the quality of the goods that display their logos. They are powerless to prevent a recurrence of the toxic-toy tragedy—and they are terrified that their brands could be dragged through the mud when the next epidemic of dangerous products strikes.

The problem is not China. The problem is a business model in which companies outsource manufacturing under short-term, low-cost contracts to the firm that will follow their design standards most cheaply. All that is really Fisher-Price about Dora the Explorer is the design—the product itself is made in a factory over which the company has almost no control. It doesn’t manage the working conditions, environmental standards, or safety practices. As a result, it no longer controls the product itself. …

We’re not really paying for quality goods anymore—we’re paying for high-priced marketing and design combined with low-wage, exploited workers producing inferior products using shoddy safety and environmental standards. Often we have no choice—we can’t find products made under decent conditions by the companies that market them. Yet as long as we allow this business model to continue, we are complicit in a system whose ineluctable outcome is the poisoning of our children.

—Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club, in the March/April 2008 issue of Sierra

Via Treehugger

Are ceramic cups more ethical than disposables? I thought the answer was rather obvious. However, in order to overcome, the amount of resources and energy used to make a ceramic mug, you need to use it daily for a couple of years. Hmm. Read more specifics here.

Made in Italy label: Read the fine print suggests that Chinese workers in Tuscan sweatshops are responsible for many “Made in Italy” goods. Interestingly, some of this is decribed as ”self-exploitation,” because the Chinese workers incurred debts to come to Italy and need to work to pay them off so they live in squalor and work in sweatshops. So much for buying from Western European countries with better labor laws.

I’ve found that shopping on Etsy is an alternative to buying from Target or Wal-Mart, and it supports artists. You can’t find everything, but you can find a lot. 

Here are a few new favorite items:

Found Notebook made from vintage scraps of paper

Whimsical Stained Glass Cross seems Greeky to me, which is probably the appeal

Rainbow Felted Tote for those of us who like big bags

Zen Buggles Minky, a baby blanket, but I’m halfway to asking for an adult size

Purple Eyelash Scarf has West Coast UU minister written all over it

Button Flowers that will never die

My friend BB sent me this great news: Trader Joe’s backs off Chinese goods.

You may recall my annoyance at Trader Joe’s for quietly selling a number of organic vegetables (fresh and frozen edamame, frozen spinach, garlic)  grown in China and seeming not to care about workers’ rights or environmental and health concerns. Apparently enough people complained for them to stop selling the products, at least single-ingredient Chinese products like I described above.

I don’t actually think this is an example of a formal boycott at work, but I would guess that with declining sales and increasing customer complaints, this was a wise business decision, and an example of a business responding to the demands of the market.  If I were Stephen Colbert, I would take full credit for this, and then return to shopping there. However, you may also recall how Trader Joe’s is the most crowded place in Southern California, and I’m still not sure I can shop there without mental health damage.

Yes, another weighty ethical moment in the hopes and dreams of the middle class.

I have to admit that I refill plastic bottles to drink from even though I know they’re germy and leach bisphenol-A, which is an endocrine disruptor.

I’m not sure what exactly it means about where I draw the line, but at least I have company in Alina Tugend, who wrote a rundown on all the options in refillable bottles.

Worker abuse in China continues despite a decade of criticism. What exactly is the problem? 

1. a supply chain of outsourcing that makes it difficult to track the factory to the corporation (hence a lack of accountability);

2. continuous demand for cheap goods that do not reflect a fair cost for labor; and

3. weak oversight, including U.S. companies hiring U.S. college students as inspectors.

And that leads us to the current situation of widespread worker abuse in factories. Here’s a specific example:

In December, two nongovernmental organizations, or NGO’s, documented what they said were abuse and labor violations at 15 factories that produce or supply goods for Wal-Mart — including the use of child labor at Huanya Gifts, a factory here in Guangzhou that makes Christmas tree ornaments….

But two workers interviewed outside Huanya’s huge complex in late December said that they were forced to work long hours to meet production quotas in harsh conditions.

“I work on the plastic molding machine from 6 in the morning to 6 at night,” said Xu Wenquan, a tiny, baby-faced 16-year-old whose hands were covered with blisters. Asked what had happened to his hands, he replied, the machines are “quite hot, so I’ve burned my hands.”

It’s not just Wal-Mart. It’s Disney. Dell. It’s most, if not all, companies outsourcing to China, where it is just about impossible to ensure workers are treated fairly and work in safe conditions. After all, all those toys with lead paint came from places where workers were toiling for days applying that paint and breathing the fumes and getting paint on their skin.

Gregory Rodriguez’s Op-Ed Greenness is next to Godliness raises some interesting issues about the way an awareness of global warming has permeating our culture with a “religious-like” fervor.

Most external national threats remind us of our essential goodness. The agents behind them are our enemies, the bad guys. Environmentalist rhetoric, on the other hand, constantly reminds us of our own culpability. For that reason, environmentalism is more akin to a religious awakening than to a political ideology. Like evangelicals, environmentalists speak, in their way, of fire and brimstone. Like the preacher, the environmental activist demands that we give ourselves to something beyond ourselves and that we do penance for our wasteful, carbon-profligate sins. Like the Catholic Church of old, they even sell indulgences — carbon offsets.

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