Post

Turbeaux wrote:

The visual diagram suggestion is for the purpose of outlining. You could treat labor practices as an input and look at them again on the recycling end of life outcome (if the product that you choose is recyclable).

A problem that I have been running into is fact-checking corporate claims. There is definitely a huge profit motive in marketing a product as something that does not destroy the environment, lead to human misery, or put money into resource extraction practices that fund criminal activities/violent conflicts. I have found that Greenpeace rates tech companies but they are largely taking corporate reports at face value and do not get into human rights issues. I wish that there was more third-party oversight in that business. There are some great organizations that only offer certain prestigious titles to food products that meet extremely rigorous environmental standards. I learned this from taking a look at palm oil (read about POFCAP).

I was hoping you had some kind of insight that I don't. I first discovered this issue when I was looking for a paint that doesn't make me sick. I did a lot of research and the best advice I got was to read the product's MSDS (material safety data sheet). So I did, when I could find it. I always ended up at the dead-end of "proprietary formula." That's when I first realized that I knew nothing about any of the products I was buying or using, and I could discover no reliable way to find out.

Edit:
I do think this is an excellent topic for this month - and I'd like to encourage discussion about it. My suggestion is to take a product, any product, and do a quick mental sketch of where it came from and where it will go when you are finished with it. (Personally I would probably exclude foods just because the origin and destination are pretty obvious and would take me in a completely different direction.)

This is enlightening just as an exercise to raise awareness of our immediate environs. We are surrounded by dozens or hundreds of products all the time. If a cosmic anomaly suddenly occurred that disappeared everything that had been produced in a factory, what would be left? Once you become aware that most of the things around you came from "a store" and are destined to be "thrown away" that can lead you to think about how complicated our lives really are. The hardest part about being an environmentalist is even imagining how life could be different.

[I'll go ahead and release the dispatch to TLA as soon as I can do so without disrupting their election process on their RMB.]