Organic Food in the Media

When I think about the food I consume on a daily basis, whether it be at the dining hall at Furman University or store-bought, it never occurs to me the question of whether or not it's safe to eat or not. For that, I realize I am incredibly privileged as people all over the world struggle to fight for their health because of the food that they eat, often times not even having a choice. Often times, the food that we consume contain GMO's, or genetically modified organisms, which can be harmful to the human body in the long run:

Examples of GMO's:

• Introducing allergens and toxins to food
• Accidental contamination between genetically modified and non-genetically modified foods
• Antibiotic resistance
• Adversely changing the nutrient content of a crop
• Creation of "super" weeds and other environmental risks

Source: http://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/features/are-biotech-foods-safe-to-eat

Why do people use them, if they are potentially harmful? In the short "run", there are temporary benefits including longer shelf-life, pest resistance, and increase in food supply. 

This brings me to my next question  - what is our world doing about it? How are they promoting the importance of healthy eating/organic foods, and how is it being advertised in our media to the public? (Organic foods meaning no synthetic pesticides, chemical fertilizer usage, no antibiotics or growth hormones etc). Most likely, you have probably seen advertisements somewhere for the promotion of organic foods at Trader Joe's or Whole Food's in America, but recent news has lead us to believe that their promotion was false advertising. One ways they use advertise is through videos, which they have uploaded on Youtube.

In hindsight this is actually quite a smart technique, as their advertising strategy was most likely to reach the masses, which Youtube does very well. As Vivian states in Chapter 11: Advertising, a lot of companies use a strategy that appears convenient and easy for people to buy their products, in order to attract consumers - "Goods and services can be ordered directly from ads appearing on the internet, making the point of purchase only a few keystrokes away" (Vivian, 298). But it's also deceiving, as it has been discovered that Whole Food's also carries foods with chemicals in them.

This is not just a problem on a domestic scale in the United States, but all over the world in countries such as the Philippines. In this article that I found on Globalpost, it talks about the horrific introduction of the first GMO rice! Isn't that totally absurd? Yes, it may be beautiful to look at, may even taste better than regular rice, but in the long term, who wants to consume all those chemicals that could harm your health drastically?? It's not even that people weren't doing anything about it, because in this article it clearly states that activists destroyed these rice fields when they heard about it, but somehow the FDA approved of it anyway. If we should take anything away, is that we need to be extremely careful of what we eat, and sometimes it may be better for us to stay indoors and cook so that we know exactly what goes into the food that goes into our bodies.

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A Look at the Amazon

Trees. They're kind of a big deal here on Earth, but we don't always realize how important they are until they start to disappear.  In other words, deforestation happens. This is the removal of a forest or stand of trees where the land is converted into non-forest use.

It occurs for many reasons: trees can be cut down and sold for fuel or timber, and the cleared land can be used as a pasture for livestock, plantations, and settlements.  However, the overwhelming direct cause of deforestation is agriculture.  One of the main places this problem is occurring is in the Amazon Rain Forest.

Understandably, the media covers this topic in a negative light because deforestation is bad. We portray it in a tragic way to show we need to do something about this issue. The environment is important to us and we need to keep it flourishing for generations to come.

Reuters shows that efforts to decrease deforestation are not working. I know that timber is needed for many every day uses such as firewood and paper, but we need to be replanting trees at a higher rate so deforestation doesn't become a dire situation. Here is a video to show the time lapse of deforestation in this area:

This issue has important media purposes and economic foundations as well. The point of covering deforestation in the media, is to give out information on what's happening in the environment around the world. When there are stories on this issue, organizations are looking for donations and support from corporations and the government as well.

Some international organizations involved with conserving rain forests and deforestation are:

International Conservation Union

Wildlife Conservation Society

The World Wildlife Fund for Nature

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Business and the Environment: Missing Pieces to the Puzzle

Communicating sustainability and environmental issues via social media has become mainstream for big businesses. More companies are using Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and blogs to talk about sustainability than ever before. It simple to why this marketing tool has been so intriguing to use to build business brand's; they want there good deeds to go viral!  The big problem when there are business motives behind anything are the bits and pieces left out that would hurt profit and when reporting on sustainability there is no exception.  Here are the pieces that you do not get when reading about the environment and sustainability when companies promote it through social media. 


What really matters

PepsiCo recently tweeted about how it is teaming up with Matt Damon and Gary White to bring access to safe water to developing countries. 

PepsiCo ‏@PepsiCo21 OctWatch how we're working w Matt Damon and Gary White at @water to bring access to safe water to developing countries http://bit.ly/1a2BkhC  View media


While it is very important that PepsiCo is helping with our global water crisis, tweets like these are simply used as a pitch to help build their brand.  Notice that this pitch is made by stating the company is working with movie star Matt Damon.  Social media is already limited by how much substance and content we are able to use when communicating a message and many of the details that would be helpful about exactly how, why, and when this project will go into effect is left out. 


The Truth, The Whole Truth and Nothing but the Truth

These same companies such as PepsiCo along with Coke and many others will not alert you of there contribution to the pollution of our earth.  Just recently Alisha Mims published an article called "Coke and Pepsi taste like tar sands."  In this article she talks about how large soda companies are some of the biggest oil users in the United States and that despite these companies' promises of sustainability, Coke and Pepsi, continue supporting "one of the worlds dirtiest oils on Earth."  As social media continues to grow the customers of these companies will continue to increasingly get more advertisement through social media, which will not only limit there knowledge on a product but also what they know to be true. The conglomeration and convergence of these companies has also hurt the limited truths that reach our consumers because people really only now of Coke and Pepsi as the top companies in the soda industry.  Pepsi has also been criticized for the amount of water pollution it has caused in many other countries but through demassification this will continue to be hidden its target audience.    


What they ACTUALLY do to help the cause 

Businesses use social media as another tool to market and advertise their product.  True authenticity has become a major issue in the world of marketing and advertisement, therefore, what they report and market on the environment and sustainability will not always be real.  The oil company with the worst safety and environmental record of the Big Six is also the author of "Beyond Petroleum," one of the most successful green-branding campaigns ever.  BP  promoted these new oil and safety precautions through social media as a huge hypocrite. The real problem here was not that BP made PR mistakes but that they do none of what they preached; it was all simply to better the brand.  Companies let perception get ahead of reality.  BP did a fabulous job with "Beyond Petroleum," but less than 1% of their revenue has ever come from renewables.

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Green Cars

Do you own a car? When you purchased this car, was the MPG one of the factors that you looked at when you bought the car?

Yes, I own a car.  Admittedly, when I bought the car I did not look at the average MPG.  I bought the car solely on the fact that it is a fast and loud sports car. Do I wish I had gone with a more environmentally friendly car? No.

As the concern over global warming and climate change grows, many large car manufacturers have responded by making “eco friendly” cars. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, over the past one hundred years, the average temperature of the earth has risen by 1.4 degrees and most the change is due to human behaviors.  One of the main factors is our daily use of automobiles.

Why do I not regret my decision to buy a more economical and “eco friendly” car? The answer is very simple.  They are all boring and surprisingly impractical.  According to many top car manufacturers, electric cars are the way of the future.  Companies like Nissan, Chevrolet, and Tesla all produce electric cars.  

                                                           http://www.moibibiki.com/gallery/model-800/tesla-roadster-1.jpg.html

The problem with current electric car technologies is that the cars cannot drive for nearly as long as their gasoline or diesel powered counterparts.  Jason Lancaster of Forbes explains the problem that Tesla Motors is having with selling their new cars.  The cars can drive for 200-300 miles between charges, which is fairly decent.  The problem for Tesla is that the cars take several hours to full recharge.  For someone like myself who drives from Chicago to Florida and back multiple times per year, stopping every 300 miles to recharge for many hours is just not feasible.

Finally, a journalistic study done by BBC's Top Gear (skip to 3:35) proves it’s not what car you drive, it's how you drive it.

   skip to 3:35

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Planned Obsolescence

(A cartoon depicting the issue of planned obsolescence; originally from here)

How many cell phones have you had in the last five years?  iPods or other type of MP3 player?  Computers?

I’ve personally had 2 computers, 2 iPods, and 3 cell phones in the last five years.  I got my first cell phone entering freshman year of high school (at age fourteen), and have had four since then, six and a half years later. And I honestly think that I’m on the lower end of that spectrum.

Planned obsolescence, also often known as  “built-to-break-down in industrial design” is a term defined on Golden Gate Express as the “policy of planning or designing a product with a limited life span”.

T-mobile’s newest plan is called “JUMP!”, and is a perfect example of planned obsolescence. It uses the slogan “Two years is too long to wait” with funny videos of a man who is struggling to wait the full two years before upgrading from his current dysfunctional phone. Watch one of the advertisements here:

Media has had a huge effect on this societal conception.  Advertising like T-mobile’s assures its consumers that it’s okay, even better, to replace their technology every two years or less. 

The companies benefit immensely from the carefully timed death of your cell phone because companies can essentially guarantee that you will be a returning customer at the end of two years, or five years, or however long they want the product to last.

But it’s not beneficial for everyone.  In fact, the thing most immensely hurt by this industrial “solution” is our planet.  For every time that we upgrade our cell phone or computer, there is a huge amount of waste that comes from that piece of technology. According to this article on The Guardian website, planned obsolescence has “led to such extraordinary mountains of waste is causing untold harm in an era of climate change and resource scarcity, so it's high time we changed it.”

The EPA tells us that excessive amounts of consumer electronics are sold every year, with only about twenty-five percent being recycled:

In 2009:

·       438 million new consumer electronics were sold;

·       5 million tons of electronics were in storage;

·       2.37 million tons of electronics were ready for end-of-life management; and

·       25% of these tons were collected for recycling

(A chart from the EPA demonstrating the problems of technology waste)

In my next post, I'll talk more about how media has created the concept of "perceived obsolescence" and how it affects our planet.

(Originally from Quiet Environmentalist)

Sources:

http://www.epa.gov/osw/conserve/materials/ecycling/manage.htm 

http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/changing-mindsets-prevent- environmental-disaster 

http://www.goldengatexpress.org/2013/02/24/shortens-longevity-of-electronics/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgRi5gMCGaI&list=PL6DDBAB794DC92FAD

http://quiet-environmentalist.com/is-the-earth-doomed-due-to-planned-obsolescence/ 

http://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/po/ 

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