Jay Kilby
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Are Republicans Vulnerable on Offshore Drilling?
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It is no secret that Republicans currently have the upper hand in the battle for public opinion on the issue of offshore drilling. Faced with skyrocketing gasoline prices that pose a genuine threat to their standard of living, Americans are quick to embrace any policy that appears to promise relief. Democrats, intimidated by the public mood and apparently ready to “compromise” on the issue, may be missing an important opportunity ...<< MORE >>
Fair Trade, Direct Trade, or Starbucks’ C.A.F.E. Practices: Who Serves the Best Cup of Clear Conscience?
This is our fifth and final segment in a series that compares three alternatives in the “ethical coffee” market: fair trade, direct trade, and Starbucks’ C.A.F.E. practices. Part one in the series explains how conditions in the traditional coffee market initially gave rise to fair trade coffee. Part two explains what fair trade means. Part three explains what direct trade coffee is. Part four explains Starbucks’ C.A.F.E. practices. The latter three articles also address criticisms of each of these types of “ethical ...<< MORE >>
Starbucks' C.A.F.E. Practices
By WeBuyItGreen: promoting green living and fair trade
This is the fourth part of a five-part series comparing three alternatives to the traditional coffee market for the socially responsible consumer: fair trade, direct trade, and Starbuck’s C.A.F.E. program. Part one explained why fair trade emerged as an alternative to the traditional coffee market. Part two explained fair trade certification and addressed several criticisms that have been made against it. Part three explained what direct trade coffee is.
Starbucks buys more fair trade coffee than any other roaster, purchasing 18 million ...<< MORE >>
What Is Direct Trade Coffee?
This is the third article in a five-part series that compares fair trade coffee, direct trade coffee, and Starbucks' C.A.F.E. program. The first article in the series, Why Do We Need Fair Trade Coffee?, explained how conditions in the traditional coffee industry gave rise to fair trade coffee. The second article, Fair Trade Coffee, explained how fair trade differs from the traditional coffee market. It also addressed several criticisms of fair trade.
In addition to fair trade, direct trade has emerged as an alternative contender for ...<< MORE >>
Fair Trade Jewelry and Textiles from Pachacuti
The factual information below about Pachacuti was provided by the company. Pachacuti is a member of Coop America and the Fair Trade Federation.
Carol Stengel is the owner of Pachacuti, a business that sells fair trade jewelry and textiles. She buys products from artisans who live in the small coastal towns and highland villages of Mexico. Juan Quezada, one of these artisans, imitates the 1000-year-old pottery techniques of the Paquime Natives. His work so closely resembles the ancient shards they left behind that upon discovering his pieces in a secondhand store ...<< MORE >>
Fair Trade Coffee
This is the second article in a five-part series that examines three alternatives for the socially responsible coffee drinker: fair trade, direct trade, and Starbuck’s C.A.F.E. program. There are other labels such as certified organic, Rainforest Alliance certified, and UTZ certified coffee. If you would like an overview of these and other certification labels for coffee, they are nicely explained in a recent article entitled Making Sense of Certification. The three alternatives to be addressed in this series are major contenders in the specialty coffee market that claim to ...<< MORE >>
Why Do We Need Fair Trade Coffee?
By WeBuyItGreen: promoting green living and fair trade
This is the first in a five-part series of articles that compares three alternatives to the traditional coffee trade industry: fair trade, direct trade, and Starbucks’ C.A.F.E. program. However, before we compare these three alternatives to one another, let’s take a look at why fair trade coffee was created in the first place. What conditions in the traditional coffee industry have created the need for fair trade, or some alternative that resembles it?
Over the past fifteen years, prices paid to the small farmers who produce coffee have dropped ...<< MORE >>
What Else Will Climate Change . . . Assumptions about “Reasonable Behavior”?
By WeBuyItGreen: promoting green living and fair trade
Warning: Contains abstract, philosophical discussion that may cause boredom.
Several decades ago, as a young political science student, I was impressed by a little classic called The Logic of Collective Action, by Mancur Olson. Olson explained why large groups of people who share a common interest in securing public goods often fail to act collectively to attain them. For example, consumers may have a common interest in making sure that the automobiles they drive are safe, but for ...<< MORE >>
Fair Trade Cards from Little Works: Art and Compassion in an Envelope
The factual information below about Little Works was provided by the company itself, a member of Coop America that has been certified by the Fair Trade Federation.
On an April day in Namibia, Sarah Paine, a Volunteer Service Overseas products designer, awoke to music. A group of artists-in-training from the small San settlement of Ekoka were singing and ready to begin their workshop. Sarah would be helping the group with oil painting and lithocuts in Etosha, Namibia’s largest game park.
Perhaps the oldest people in the world, the San occupied ...<< MORE >>
Gas Giveaways? . . . A Little Common Sense, Please
By WeBuyItGreen: promoting green living and fair trade
The latest marketing technique to blaze the American landscape is the use of “free gasoline” to attract customers. Furniture stores, cafes, hotels—you name it—merchants in every sector are offering to give away gasoline to their customers in order to get them in the door. Even nonprofits are getting into the act. The Detroit News reported that the American Red Cross of Southeastern Michigan is offering to enter blood donors in a drawing in which winners will receive free gas cards. According to the Tacoma, WA News Tribune, ...<< MORE >>
"Inconvenient Truth” and the Political Spectrum
The following entry originally appeared in the Portland Oregonian on June 30, 2008.
By WeBuyItGreen: promoting green living and fair trade
For many on both the right and the left, the effects of the truth about climate change are more than inconvenient. They have been personally confusing.
This is not difficult to understand with respect to conservative ideology. Members of the right believe in independent enterprise. Their hero is Ronald Reagan, the great communicator ...<< MORE >>
Take the Tap Water Movement Pledge: Avoid Bottled Water
If you have been a regular at the WeBuyItGreen Blog, you may have noticed that I rant quite often about bottled water. The manufacture and transport of bottled water uses enough petroleum to power 3 million cars for a year. Its manufacture alone produces two and a half million tons of carbon dioxide. Americans spend over $15 billion a year on bottled water.
People--this is low-hanging fruit when it comes to creating a sustainable environment. Imagine the amount of good we could do if we took that $15 billion ...<< MORE >>
How to Buy Green Products
"I’ve heard some people say that bamboo clothing is good for the environment, but others say that it isn’t because of the chemicals used to produce it? Who is right?”
“I’ve heard a lot about 'greenwashing' lately. How do I know when I can trust a label that says a product is better for the environment?”
Although many consumers have now decided that they want to go green, they are finding that it can be complicated. Intelligent green consumption takes more than good will alone. It also requires reliable information ...<< MORE >>
Greenwashing: Consumer Resources for Buying Green Products
In addition to certification programs and FTC regulation, the consumer has several online resources that can help with identifying genuinely green businesses and products and combating the problem of greenwashing.
Co-op America: Co-op America has a Responsible Shopper tool that enables the green consumer to look up businesses and get a brief background check on their environmental and social responsibility track record. For example, if you look up Target, you learn that although the company is a partner in the EPA ...<< MORE >>
Regulation of Greenwashing by the Federal Trade Commission
By WeBuyItGreen: promoting green living and fair trade
In addition to green certification programs, government regulation provides
the consumer some degree of protection against greenwashing. In the U.S., the
Federal Trade Commission is the primary source for consumer protection against deceptive advertising and provides
guides for environmental marketing claims. The FTC is authorized to “bring law enforcement actions against false or misleading marketing claims”1 Although the Green Guides
are intended as guidelines for voluntary compliance and do not themselves have “the force and effect of law,” the FTC can bring action against ...
Greenwashing: Certification of Green Products
By WeBuyItGreen: promoting green living and fair trade
One resource that can help consumers to combat greenwashing is certification. There are a number of highly reputable programs that certify particular products as beneficial to the
environment. Certification programs vary in terms of cost as well as the level of assurance they can provide. Some are very reliable, but others are little more than sophisticated
examples of the very greenwashing they claim to be preventing. Therefore, it is important to know which certification programs are reliable and why.
Life Cycle Assessment
The most extensive, reliable, and expensive certification programs ...
<< MORE >>Greenwashing: Green Buyer Beware
By now, many of you may be familiar with a study entitled The Six Sins of Greenwashing, conducted by TerraChoice Environmental Marketing on green advertising. The study found that the vast majority of green marketing by big box stores was either misleading or false, that the problem of “greenwashing” is widespread. Companies often misrepresent the environmental benefits of their products in order to reap economic rewards from the growing public sense of responsibility for creating a sustainable future, threatening to spread cynicism and deflate the growing interest in “going green.”
Over the past month, I have posted questions ...
<< MORE >>Fair Trade Gifts that Change the World: Juana Cholotio’s Story
By WeBuyItGreen: promoting green living and fair trade
This is the first in a series at WeBuyItGreen called Fair Trade Gifts that Change the World, which attempts to show how buying fair trade goods impacts the lives of the
individuals who produce them.
Juana Cholotio sits on the floor of her living room beading a twelve-stranded bracelet as blue and beautiful as any Caribbean lagoon. Her twenty-one year old daughter, Melchora Isabel, works at the table with four other women. The table only seats five, so the remaining three women in this group of nine have joined Juana on ...
<< MORE >>On the Lighter Side: The War on Greenwashing
By WeBuyItGreen: promoting green living and fair trade
In case you haven’t heard, Nestle has come out with an “Eco-Shaped” bottle for water. They are telling us it’s good for the environment because it uses less plastic than it used to and has a smaller label. But before you run out and buy a bunch of these things to save the environment, you should recognize that your local water utility provides the same product minus the environmental costs associated with creating and disposing of plastic containers, which makes the Nestle ad a case of greenwashing.
...<< MORE >>Response to Climate Change: Can We Do This?
By WeBuyItGreen: promoting green living and fair trade
Deflated Mylar balloons sag above the third tier of the schoolyard bleachers marking a memorial for three young victims murdered last summer in Newark, New Jersey. The news photo reinforces a common image of the city, a place where the crime rate was double that of the average U.S. city from 1999-2001, where unemployment rose to 12.5% in 2002-2003. So when Mayor Cory Booker of Newark recently appeared on a Bill Moyers special and articulately made a case for optimism about his city, I listened. ...<< MORE >>