{"id":291,"date":"2018-04-14T17:02:40","date_gmt":"2018-04-14T17:02:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/?p=291"},"modified":"2018-04-14T17:02:40","modified_gmt":"2018-04-14T17:02:40","slug":"greenwashing-our-way-to-complacency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/2018\/04\/14\/greenwashing-our-way-to-complacency\/","title":{"rendered":"Greenwashing our Way to Complacency"},"content":{"rendered":"

To those who may be unfamiliar, greenwashing is a marketing tactic that promotes products as \u201cgreen\u201d or \u201chealthy\u201d without holding any real benefit to the consumer, the environment, or greater social equity. \u00a0As mentioned by <\/span>Jennifer McNulty<\/span><\/a>, \u201c<\/span>\u2018buying green\u2019 offers little real defense against environmental hazards and may pose an even greater threat by lulling people into a false sense of security”. This false sense of security is known as inverted quarantine. In this model, people attempt to exclude themselves from problems outside of their own bubble, making them complacent to advertising and feel as if buying \u201cgreen\u201d products is doing their part.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Coca<\/a><\/p>\n

Photo By: jeepersmedia<\/a><\/p>\n

While I do believe that some products truly are made with the planet and equity in mind, the bottom line of nearly any business is to make money. There are slim to no regulations on the words companies are allowed to use on their websites and packaging. This means that any company can color their plastic bottles using toxic green dye and slap the word sustainable on the outside and their sales go up. What I believe McNulty missed in her article was a call to action. People consuming more while turning a blind eye to other issues will never be an answer to the world\u2019s problems, but it is impossible to wind back the clock and exist in a time when the world did not revolve around consumerism.<\/span><\/p>\n

In this way, McNulty\u2019s article reminded me of Michael Pollan\u2019s book <\/span>In Defense of Food. <\/span><\/i>Pollan also failed to acknowledge many issues of modernity and globalization. He makes the generalization that problems surrounding food and health would be fixed by, \u201ceat[ing] food, not too much, mostly plants\u201d (Pollan 1), most of which would be easier to do in a preindustrial world. Today\u2019s world food problems cannot be addressed without first discussing wealth disparities and global trade. So many of the products people in first world countries consume are built upon the suffering and unjust treatment of workers across seas. If we hope to see any progress with global equity, people must not become numb to the suffering of others.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Daily<\/a><\/p>\n

Photo By: Lauren Manning<\/a><\/p>\n

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To those who may be unfamiliar, greenwashing is a marketing tactic that promotes products as \u201cgreen\u201d or \u201chealthy\u201d without holding any real benefit to the consumer, the environment, or greater social equity. \u00a0As mentioned by Jennifer McNulty, \u201c\u2018buying green\u2019 offers little real defense against environmental hazards and may pose an even greater threat by lulling people into a false sense… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":118,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,13,7,17],"tags":[36,35,33],"class_list":["post-291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movements","category-public-health","category-topics","category-trade","tag-consumerism","tag-greenwashing","tag-inverted-quarantine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/118"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=291"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":303,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291\/revisions\/303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}