Greenwashing

Philosophy Forums Society, Government, and Economics
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[size=150]Your Favorite ‘Natural’ Brands May Not Be What They Seem[/size]

Burt’s Bees lip balm was originally sold at independently owned health food stores. But more recently, Burt’s Bees products have appeared everywhere — in grocery stores, drug stores, and big-box stores like Target and Wal-Mart. That’s because Burt’s Bees is now owned by Clorox, a massive corporation that has historically cared very little about the environment or human health.

Many of the products you may trust and respect for their independence and social responsibility are now owned by big corporations that are going out of their way to hide their link to the small, socially responsible brands.

Tom’s of Maine is owned by Colgate-Palmolive, a massive company with a revenue of approximately $11.4 billion.

Danone, the French conglomerate which also owns Brown Cow, has acquired a majority holding in Stoneyfield — the same Danone that had to recall large quantities of its yogurt in 2007 after it was found to contain unsafe levels of dioxins.

Horizon Organic milk was bought out by the largest diary company in the U.S., Dean Foods, in 2005.

Odwalla is now owned by Coca-Cola. Almost as soon as Coca-Cola bought the company, it stopped selling the fresh-squeezed OJ that had made Odwalla famous and popular — fresh squeezed can’t last the days and weeks the juices are now in transit or on the shelf.

Pepsi bought Naked Juice in 2006, in order to compete with Odwalla.

Smuckers grabbed several juice mainstays from the health food store shelves: After The Fall, R.W. Knudsen and Santa Cruz Organic.

Kashi cereals was bought in July 2000 by Kellogg’s, the 12th-largest company in North American food sales (but if you look at a box of Kashi’s “Go Lean Crunch”, for example, you will find not one mention of the fact that Kellogg’s owns them.)

Kraft Foods bought the natural cereal maker Back to Nature. Kraft is a subsidiary of Altria, which also owns Philip Morris, one of the world’s largest producers of cigarettes.

General Mills owns Cascadian Farm.

Barbara’s Bakery is owned by Weetabix, the leading British cereal company.

Health Valley and Arrowhead Mills are owned by Hain Celestial Group, a natural food company traded on the NASDAQ, with H.J. Heinz owning 16 percent of the company.

Green and Black’s organic chocolate was taken over in 2005 by Schweppes, the 10th-largest company in North American packaged-food sales.

Dagoba Chocolate is actually owned by Hershey Foods.

Marketing strategies have been fooling you, convincing you to trust that the niche brands continue to be small, environmentally conscious businesses with ecologically sound practices.

In fact, they are frequently cogs in the giant corporate wheel. It is time to question how much the ownership and neglectful marketing of these “pseudo” responsible brands warrant crossing them off your shopping list.

And it is time to find products more in tune with your values — at least until they, too, get bought out by a large conglomerate.

Learn how to make as many things at home as you can. Not only will this save you money, it will also improve your quality of life.

corditecountryshownotes.wordpres … they-seem/

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And the thing is, nowhere does it actually say, either on the Tom’s of Maine package or toothpaste tube that it belongs to Colgate. :confused:

Neither Colgate nor Tom’s of Maine website mentions the other. If a customer did not know, he would get an impression that the two are not related; especially by looking at Tom’s of Maine website.

:confused:

tomsofmaine.com/business-pra … -for-being

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It’s understandable that you would be cautious of these brands being corporate owned and mass produced, but this doesn’t make them any less safe or health conscious. My main concern is corporate ownership in general, and the running down of small business. To combat the corporates you have to think like them, and getting competitive is the best weapon. You can make this kind of stuff at home, but to distribute these products would be optimal for both yourself and the public market. The only issue is standing your ground and not giving into the temptation of a buyout.

I was watching a program the other night on Burt’s Bees products. The woman who started the company used to make her lip balms in large kettles and as the business boomed into the million mark she moved to NC to start factory productions and shortly thereafter gave into the near billion dollars from Clorox. Not just for the sake of the money, but also because she consequently wanted to be free of having to spend the rest of her retirement looking after the industry.

It seems so hypocritical for ecofriendly type businesses to sell to corporate like that, but when you look at it in terms of the way that it started and ended up you can see how a hippy beekeeper would much rather take the money than be responsible for a business they no longer have interest or creative roots in.

Once factories are brought into play it sort of goes downhill from there. Assembly line industry just ruins capitalism.

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With all due respect, this thread seems more suited for Social Sciences than Mundane Babble. It’s unquestionably a relevant Social issue, would you mind if I move it there, please?

That having been asked, it would seem to me that the majority of people that buy certain brands of things (organic) do so because they want to help the environment, or they want animals to be treated humanely, something along those lines. Provided that these products are manufactured, distributed and sold in a manner consistent with what is being claimed by the products, themselves, then does it really matter that the parent company also has products that may be manufacturewd, distributed or sold in environmentally unsound ways?

Think about it this way, if everyone bought this organic milk, then Dean’s Farms would stop making their regular Dean’s Dairy Milk which is not organic. For that reason, it comes as no surprise to me that these major companies are, “Hedging their bets,” so to speak and becoming involved in a growing and lucrative niche market. It is for reasons such as this that they are major companies to begin with, is it not?

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It is important because many of these companies exist by fleecing the customer.

Take Horizon milk. Dean knows the dairy regulations backwards and forwards. Ditto with the organic regulations.

Did you know that milk from a cow is organic if the cow was certified organic due to the treatment received at the moment the cow was milked? Dean does. So Horizon “organic” milk is from cows that are technically “organic” but are actually pretty much just normal cows that get let out onto the pasture occasionally, like right before they are milked.

If you care about the sort of things that ought be behind the “organic” label, this sort of thing is very important.

Here is a funny take on these sad, sad situations:

cracked.com/article_18376_th … shing.html

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Yes, they’ll certainly try to scheme their money grubbing paws into making that extra dollar in whatever cheesy fashion they can. That’s why the importance lies in smaller business modules, because their interests are relatively central to the community and its well being.

Horizon’s loophole was put to an end in February of this year, though.

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Wow, all of these brands are owned by ONE company:
hain-celestial.com/brands.php

Even Avalon Organics. :frowning:

It’s the lie that I’m upset about. I remember there was a time when the label said something to the effect “blah blah is a registered trademark of Coca Cola Co.” - something that connected the product to its owner. Now, they don’t even put that on the label. I bet 90% of consumers think that all these organic brands represent small independent companies, because that is perception that is created by the [intentional] omission. It’s a lie.

Go ahead, I don’t really care.

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Oh yeah, you’re right. It’s utterly disgusting.

I can’t eat at what I call the one-up from fast food chain restaurants like Chili’s, Outback, Red Lobster, Olive Garden etc etc anymore because their food is such low quality and all owned by the same corporations. You’ll find one near every Wal-mart parking lot.

I’ll look at their menus and frown…the selection is so terrible and when it comes out it looks cheaply made. Ruby Tuesday is actually the only half decent one I can think of.

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At least they are not fed antibiotics and hormones.

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Very informative and useful OP Pandora. It’s usually useful to have as much information as possible. Thanks.

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It is most assuredly an omission, but I strongly disagree that it is a lie whether the omission is intentional or not. Provided that the company in question is a separate legal entity from the parent company, they have the right to put whatever they want to on the product’s container.

I would also be willing to wager that many of the consumers think the companies are independent, but I have to admit that you lose me on the small. For example, if you get Great Value Cage-Free Organic Eggs, and I’m pretty sure the Great Value products say they are made or distributed by Wal-Mart, you know it’s not a small company. Even without the label saying so, though, you would still know it is not a small company because GV is at every Wal-Mart!

I can say that I use Boca, Morningstar and Eggland’s Best products, the former two are soy-based stuff made to taste like meats (they really do!) and the last is, of course, eggs. I have no reason to believe that any of these places are small companies (though I haven’t researched it) and I automatically doubt if they are independent.

…and researching now…

Here’s one, MorningStar Farms doesn’t even necessarily use cage-free eggs in everything!

[b]http://www.morningstarfarms.com/faq.aspx[/b]

So, now I might not be using any more MorningStar. You see, that’s a great example because I assumed a company for vegetarians would use cage-free eggs, but they didn’t lie to me about it; they just don’t say on the box that some of the eggs are not cage-free.

They have a store locator on the MoringStar Farms site, and I looked up Kansas City, MO, which is about 800 miles from me. There are stores there that carry their stuff, so not a small company.

I couldn’t find much on Boca’s site, except they’re in Wisconsin, I’m in Ohio, so they can’t be small.

It looks like Eggland’s Best is available in all fifty of the States and in Puerto Rico and the Bahamas.

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Isn’t it a good thing when green goes mainstream?

Tom’s of Maine was not some mom and pop filling toothpaste tubes by hand in a garage, somewhere.

Do we just hate big companies because they are big?

Shouldn’t we be happy that big companies are at least a little more green than they were?

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In case of Tom’s of Maine, Colgate acquired 84% of the company, while the original owners were left with the remaining 16%. Most of the profits will go to Colgate. Here’s something I found from the interview with the original owners :

articles.sfgate.com/2007-10-10/b … -oral-care

The way I see it, the idea of buying into a Tom’s of Maine logo is an illusion. If over 80% of the company is owned by Colgate, then the customer is essentially a Colgate customer thinking he is a Tom’s of Maine customer. In reality there is no distinction between the two companies. So, buying into ‘a logo’ is buying into an illusion. (a lie)
I understand their points (in the interview) regarding business competition and the sacrifices that need to be made for the sake of survival of certain values, but that could have been achieved without the omission. Why can’t Colgate claim that it also supports natural products? Why doesn’t it claim the credit on the package label? This, to me is a proof that there is a[deliberate] illusion of two separate companies that is being manufactured, which is held together by one thing, profit - profit that is essentially based on a lie.

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I agree, and such should be the case for everyone who was Green because they wanted to be Green and not because it was the underground thing to do. Everyone here seems quite intelligent, so I assume that they went Green only after putting some thought into it and not because of a fad.

I think that many people feel as though it somehow takes away from the authenticity of the product. I have no idea why this should be, maybe people feel as though only smaller companies can micro-manage to such an extent that the products are what the companies claim them to be.

That’s exactly my point! 100% agreement.

The spreading of the, “Green,” movement is largely going to be a function of demand, by the way. As I believe I stated earlier, if everyone bought the Horizon Milk as opposed to the regular Dean’s Dairy Milk, then Dean’s Dairy would go 100% Organic because there would be no demand for their other product. As one may expect, they are not going to produce something that noone is buying, so they would go entirely, “Green.”

This isn’t like listening to only Indie Music because you don’t want the revenue going to major music labels, this is about the actual product, not the producer.

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When an independent record label or book publisher gets a distribution deal with a big record label or publishing house, does the music or novel change?

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Yes, but small companies are green because they actually believe in “green”; big companies get green only when it becomes profitable.

Do you think big companies really give a shit (pardon me) about being green? No, they only care about profit. [and convincing customers otherwise…even if they have to visually dissociate themselves from the product]

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Of course not, but the backlash against the major record labels was more about unfair pricing and their stance on so-called, “Piracy,” not so much about the music they put out.

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Let me put it to you this way:

If a major company produces dish soap that smells like Lavender also produces a dish soap (under a different brand name) that smells like oranges, and I don’t particularly care for the lavender kind, then does it change the fact that the dish soap I do like which smells like oranges, smells like oranges even if it doesn’t have the parent company’s brand name on the bottle?

A logo is an illusion. Logos are for advertising, they typically don’t have very much to do with the product or quality thereof.

I also still maintain that a deliberate omission is not a lie. With the proper amount of research, these things can clearly be determined and have been determined as evidenced by this thread. I also maintain that it is up to each consumer (if they so desire) to reserach the products they use. If a company had to disclose on the packaging every little thing that an argument could be made for them to disclose, prices would double because you’d have to quadruple the size of the packaging to fit all the text!

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Pandora -

I don’t actually care what they care about. I use Tom’s deodorant. It works. I don;t care who makes how much money on it. I’m just glad I can get it in more than two stores now. Maybe you can even get it in Florida, now.

By the way, I have known a couple of people who knew, and in one case worked for, Tom’s.

He’s not a saint, I think.

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Any product for sale on the open market is there for one reason: To make as large a profit as possible. Any promotion of the product (labeling, advertising, test marketing, etc) is aimed at convincing potential customers to buy - period. If you’re looking for “truth in advertising” find another planet - one without humans.