Gupshup Opinions
What are we doing?
By Rebel X
The way we do business has seen some really dark days. whether its a river in Ohio catching fire, or the cancer rates in some manufacturing areas in China.
I am a futurist at heart always looking for that vision of a more high-tech future where the preset notions of how to live get shattered. Think about the internet, here I am posting my thoughts to people, many who I don’t know aside from their nicknames on the site, and others who I don’t even know exist. How is that possible..again technology, and a vision for future.
So lets tune this vision of future on its side, what is the cost of some of these things and is the cost really worth it? Or could thins be done differently.
Wherever we read we have stories of doom and gloom, yet we can be fat dumb and happy and just not care, trash dump sites turning into mountains, finding out information like nursing mothers in silicon valley have traces of PBDE in their breast milk. PBDE is a fire retardant used in plastics.
When I read warnings like one can only at a small quantity of fish from lake Michigan, because the mercury content is so high.
The solutions, is not governments, they move too slow. There are some admirable moves, notably by the EU as they came up with the WEEE and RoHS legislations. WEEE basically looked at the amount of refuse going into landfills and with there being more electronic items that were getting obsolete at a much higher rate than ever before, all these things were going into trash, into landfills and materials like hex chrome, cadmium, mercury, were getting released into ground, into streams and then impacting the food supply. So they decide to try and bring in a recycling initiative which made manufacturers partially responsible for recycling these items. It was however found that even in recycling these compounds were being released into the surroundings. The solution, stop it at the source, have more responsible manufacturing practices, work together in the entire supply chain to . I was lucky enough to lead the development, commercialization and launch of the first comprehensive global program to deal with this issue. But that is just one such initiative. More are needed.
US seemed to have over 2 hundred environmental bills at federal and state levels that last time I checked. California’s proposition 65 being one that has been in place and has some impact in this area. But would US come up with a more comprehensive nationwide approach? would EPA move from being beyond the bloated politicized entity that it has become?
What about other regions?
As we see news of high levels of lead in toys from China, high levels of lead in plastic utensils that our children…infants and toddlers are eating from, it just paints a worrisome picture.
What else are we reading? The amount of saturated fat in fast food? The nil nutritional value of the super bleached flour they use. The amount of trash shopping bags generate? Hormone pumped beef and chicken? Nitrates..a known carcinogen in lunch meat? HFCS in almost everything we eat? High amounts of sodium?
This is a cost of development, but it does not have to be, BASF has already come out with full degradable shopping bags,
Companies will do what is in their interest, we hear about corporate social responsibility. There are studies how CSR is beneficial for the bottom line. I will tell you however that whatever my friends at netimpact say. I have sat in with discussions with major suppliers and manufacturers, and they see it as just cost..cost and more cost that makes them non-competitive.
The tune of the same suppliers had changed, when the OEM’s they were supplying to made that a condition of doing business with them.
Whats the lesson here? Consumers can do the same..demand, and be willing to pay for (or forcing companies to eat) additional cost for doing things in a responsible manner.
I believe in future, I believe in technology, I believe that businesses listen to the customers. I don’t believe that the governments are independent enough (due to to lobbying groups), nimble enough, or responsible enough to be proactive in this area. After all it will be this August that US will have a Nutritional Quality Index available, and even that came about through private efforts.
Government is not the answer, UN is not the answer, the methodology of doing things these groups follow is one which is known as BOGSAT in my world…Bunch Of Guys Sitting Around Talking (ladies you can replace guys with girls if we feel left out)
Consumer pressure is the quickest way to make businesses react, and find solutions, not government. That is my view.
What do you think?
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