Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Association, Forestry Stewardship Council, and many other organized and regulated
labels communicate trust, authority and transparency because they come with a clear
explanation of the criteria informing them. This serves to undermine the rather vague
and usually meaningless green claims some manufacturers place on their products.
What, after all, does 'environmentally friendly', 'simple' or 'natural' mean unless
there is a clear explanation? In the US, progress has been made regarding food
labelling, but there are still no clear standards for household products. As Beth Daley
(2005) of the
Boston Globe
noted, 'to find out what's really inside a cleaner, consumers
must decipher label claims or request documents the company must publish that list
federally named hazardous substances'.
Occasionally, changes to policy can lead to widespread critical discussion. In
October 2007, the Soil Association, Britain's most important campaigning and
certification organization for organic food and farming, announced that it was
recommending that only organic food air-freighted into the country that had been
produced according to the Association's own ethical trade standards, or those of
the Fair Trade Association, would qualify for the Soil Association label. The reasoning
behind the decision was to help minimize the use of air freight, since this mode of
transportation generates 177 times more greenhouse gases than shipping. It is clear
that increasing fossil fuel use worsens the effects of global warming, and Africa is
already suffering particularly badly from climate change. Less than 1 per cent of
organic food comes into the UK by air, but 80 per cent of this is produced by
farmers in low- or middle-income countries who otherwise have a very low carbon
footprint. Recognizing the moral difficulty of this recommendation, Anna Bradley,
Chair of the Soil Association's Standards Board, said:
It is neither sustainable nor responsible to encourage poorer farmers to be reliant
on air freight, but we recognize that building alternative markets that offer the
same social and economic benefits as organic exports will take time. Therefore,
the Soil Association will be doing all it can to encourage farmers in developing
countries to create and build organic markets that do not depend on air freight.
We also want the public to have clear and meaningful information about both
the environmental and social impact of air-freighted organic food.
(Soil Association, 2007)
Similarly,
Ethical Consumer Magazine
provides consumers with information on
the ethical and sustainability performance of companies and products, rating them
against five ethical criteria based on information from a variety of sources, including
NGO reports, corporate communications and daily news. The resulting 'ethiscore'
enables users to quickly differentiate between companies, monitor corporate ethical
performance, and benchmark companies within product or market sectors. The five
categories are:
1
Environment
(environmental reporting, nuclear power, climate change, pollution
and toxics, habitats and resources).
2
People
(human rights, workers' rights, supply chain policy, irresponsible market-
ing, armaments).
3
Animals
(animal testing, factory farming).
