Some More News - SMN: How Corporations Pretend To Be Eco-Friendly

Episode Date: May 10, 2023

Hi. In today's episode, we look at how corporations pretend to be eco-friendly while cutting corners and keeping quarterly profits their top priority. Sources: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1FZ84xnSmfFJvBI4eoH-iyE338wViCzoe3FuOd4Bnuqk/edit?usp=sharing Support us on our PATREON: http://patreon.com/somemorenews  Check out our MERCH STORE: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/somemorenews?ref_id=9949  SUBSCRIBE to SOME MORE NEWS: https://tinyurl.com/ybfx89rh    Subscribe to the Even More News and SMN audio podcasts here: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/some-more-news/id1364825229  Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6ebqegozpFt9hY2WJ7TDiA?si=5keGjCe5SxejFN1XkQlZ3w&dl_branch=1  Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/show/even-more-news   Follow us on social media: Twitter: https://twitter.com/SomeMoreNews  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/SomeMoreNews/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SomeMoreNews/  TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@somemorenews  If you're looking for an easier way to take supplements, Athletic Greens is giving you a FREE 1-year supply of Vitamin D AND 5 free travel packs with your first purchase. Go to https://athleticgreens.com/MORENEWS. Upgrade your CBD. Go to https://NextEvo.com/MORENEWS to get 20% off your first order of $40 or more. What's better than getting one pair of Shady Rays and not worrying if you break or lose them? Getting two! Go to https://shadyrays.com/morenews and use code MORENEWS and for a limited time, when you buy one pair of Shady Rays, you'll get a second pair FREE.

What's up, Newsbaskets? I'm What If News Had a Face, AKA Cody Johnston. And here is some fresh steaming news. The Coca-Cola company has solved climate change by switching Sprite bottles from green to clear. Yeah, we did it, a-ooga! All right, eat my weird poo, global warming. I'm gonna leave my fridge open all day, every day.

That's sad. That's the height of my excitement. That's all I could imagine myself doing in that situation. In the hypothetical world where we've solved climate change, I hypothetically celebrated by letting all my cheese spoil. Was I still gonna eat it? Hypothetically? I say hypothetical because Coca-Cola

didn't completely fix climate change by changing Sprite bottles from green to clear, but it did increase the recyclability of the bottles. And according to a press release, took a major step towards a circular economy. The concept of recycling is obviously dope and circular sounds like a good thing for an economy to be. So that still seems like a win in my book.

Cody's big book of wins, catch it on the shelves on a date. Except the problem is that the change only makes Sprite bottles a little bit more recyclable. And more importantly, most single use plastics just aren't recycled that much anyway. As of 2018, the EPA reported only 29.1% of polyethylene terephthalate, the plastic Sprite bottles are made of,

was recycled in the United States. So this big change to clear bottles was more of a PR stunt than anything else. According to climate activists, Coca-Cola would have to commit to much bigger changes to actually make an impact, like having 50% reusable or refillable containers by 2030, which is double the company's current goal. So why make a big fuss over the change? If it doesn't meaningfully impact climate change or help the environment and Coca-Cola knows that, and climate activists and scientists know that,

and even humble newsy patooties like me know that, then why are they still doing it? What are they getting out of it? Some kind of thing? Some kind of valuable thing that companies get? I can't imagine what that would be. How to make money by pretending to care about climate change. Oh, of course, I keep forgetting about money

because of all the things I have. Coca-Cola is making what is ultimately a hollow gesture towards repairing the environment in order to make money and avoid accountability. And while this Sprite debacle, this Sprite-tastrophe is a particularly cheeky example, because like, come on, you just changed the color of the bottle.

I mean, come on. Coca-Cola is by no means the only example of large corporations attempting to slip a fast one past consumers. And by slip a fast one past consumers. And by slip a fast one, I of course mean pretend to be eco-friendly while doing nothing of substance and continuing to suck the earth dry for a quick buck-a-roonie. And this is what today's episode is all up inside of. A thing commonly called greenwashing by people who actually give a shit. And it's happening all over the gosh darn place.

Stop less, go more. The Passat TDI Clean Diesel with up to 814 highway miles per tank. Just one reason Volkswagen is the number one selling diesel car brand in America. That's a Volkswagen ad from 2015 for the TDI Clean Diesel, which the car company marketed as a cleaner and more fuel efficient choice to other options

on the market, despite all the while using a sneaky defeat device to cheat emissions tests on hundreds of thousands of vehicles sold in the US that turned out to be emitting nitrogen oxide pollutants up to 40 times the legal limit. Now, I know this is just our first example after the cold open or whatever, but I just told you that a major corporation designed a secret piece of technology specifically to cheat a test and dodge environmental regulations on their cars and then turned around and advertised

those exact same cars as good for the environment. That's pretty evil, right? That's like some Captain Planet villainy and we are just getting warmed up. How about them Starbucks? I mean, surely those hipster ass coffee jockeys must have done something good. What with their excellent trans healthcare policy

and no other political positions worth mentioning. In 2018, the coffee company hit an environmental milestone by getting rid of their plastic straws and replacing them with a new eco-friendly strawless lid. This sick new green climate conscious lid was made of, says here plastic. Okay. Was it at least green?

It wasn't green. Okay, it wasn't green. So, okay, well, the company rationalized their decision by saying that while yes, the new lids were still plastic, they were a different kind of plastic that could be recycled more easily, just like with Sprite and the green bottles. However, also like Sprite and the green bottles, this logic rests on the assumption

that 100% of the new lids on the block would be recycled when in fact only 9% of the world's plastic is recycled, even if it's a recyclable plastic. Remember that, stored in the old wet meat computer because we're going to circle back to it a little later. So the eco-friendly switch to the new lids was overshadowed by the fact that almost no one actually recycles anything.

What's worse, it turns out that the new lids actually used more plastic than the previous ones. So the whole thing was like a mermaid pissing into the wind, Sea wind. It exists, maybe. Anyway, we have more examples because of course we do. And where some just see scraps and leftovers, we see the beginning of something new. Because we're changing fashion. Starting with the things that used to be thrown away. starting with the things that used to be thrown away.

So from now on, let's wear the waist. Ooh, so revolutionary. In 2020, H&M launched their Conscious Collection, a clothing line specifically marketed as being better for the environment than other clothing lines. Except just two years after the collection launched, H&M was hit with multiple lawsuits claiming their marketing was misleading

with regards to how sustainable the clothing line actually was. In some cases, H&M had even gone so far as to just blatantly lie about stuff. For instance, they claimed one dress was made with 20% less water on average, but an independent investigation by Quartz revealed that the dress was, in reality, made with 20% more water. You know, the total exact fucking opposite of H&M's claim.

Quartz discovered that the company had made this specific brand of fibbing a habit. By comparing H&M's self-reported sustainability scorecard to the Higgs Sustainability Index, courts found that in some cases, the clothing brand had just straight up reversed figures, changing negatives to positives and vice versa. It's worth mentioning that the Higgs Index is not a very good way to measure sustainability, which means that H&M was so garbage

that they had to lie to pass the test that's also garbage. Oh, also the conscious collection is still available to buy despite these multiple lawsuits because corporations don't feel shame, you know, since they aren't people. It turns out that sustainability and climate conscious are phrases that have no meaningful legal definition like all natural

or ice beer or fair and balanced TMCR infinity. That means H&M and companies like it can use those terms as a marketing gimmick without any fear of being made to actually substantiate their claims or be held accountable in any way. And these were just examples from coffee and clothing companies. Imagine the lies that happen when your business is actively attacking the environment, like Scorpion avenging the death of his family.

Oil companies love making a big deal out of trying to appear climate friendly, even spending millions of dollars on green PR campaigns. Companies like BP, Shell, Chevron, and Exxon have all upped their eco-related marketing in the last few years. The nonprofit Influence Map analyzed the public communications

from a bunch of these companies and found that 60% of the communications contained at least one green claim, which was three times as often as they used words like oil or gas or presumably ass sneeze. However, only 12% of the surveyed companies combined capital expenditures is set to be spent on climate friendly things like low carbon technology. So a lot of talk and very little action. A study published in 2022 that specifically looked at the discrepancy between the rhetoric of these oil companies and their actual behavior found that all four companies haven't stopped

lobbying governments to hamstring environmental regulations while attempting to, quote, redirect the responsibility for reducing emissions to consumers. And at the same time, putting out misleading ads trying to push fossil fuels like liquefied methane gas as a green solution. Now to be fair and balanced, like a dainty maiden, methane gas is absolutely better than most fossil fuels, but the extraction of it tends to be very damaging,

which is why it's considered a quote, bridge fuel to sustainable energy. It's a placeholder. It's low carbon, the same way that Big Macs are low carb because they could have added a fourth bun. But we need to find a replacement for it. And so that's why trying to push it as a big magical solution is so insidious.

Another one of Big Oil's go-to PR strategies is carbon capture, as in the idea that big manufacturers can trap the CO2 produced by their manufacturing and then store it in such a way that it's unable to affect the atmosphere and therefore the climate. Many climate experts agree that carbon capture and storage is crucial to reducing emissions to combat climate change. That's why ExxonMobil is deploying this technology. It can remove more than 90% of CO2 emissions from carbon-intensive industries. Hot diggity damn! What the hell?

That commercial was so sexily compelling. Well, with all them fancy buttons being pressed and hot people walking through science hallways. And they said 90%, which is a lot of percent. So this must be good. And I can continue to use Exxon oil and gas with my conscience assuaged. Wait, hold on.

Wait, it says here I need glasses. That's mean. Also, it says that even though carbon capture technology is a good thing, like in a vacuum, in reality, 80 to 90% of the captured CO2 is used in enhanced oil recovery. This is when these companies pump carbon deep underground to get those last hard to reach dregs of crude oil

that normal drilling methods won't get. And in that process, that carbon gets spewed back into the environment. Exxon provided carbon dioxide to a depleted oil field in Wyoming, resulting in an unknown amount of the gas being spat back up to the surface through old oil wells and other passageways.

A nearby elementary school was actually forced to close in 2016 after dangerous levels of CO2 were discovered inside. So yeah, technically they do capture carbon, but then they just release it again, often to horrifying results. That's like if an exterminator cleared out 90% of the spiders from your home and then just dumped them all in your car.

It's not exactly solving the problem in good faith. And on top of all of that, these companies can also use carbon capture as a justification to claim hundreds of millions in carbon tax credits, even though, and I really can't emphasize this enough, they're using the carbon to drill oil and make school children sick,

or selling it to other big companies who are using it to drill oil and make school children sick. It's a real making kids sick potluck, much like that potluck I hosted. Since Congress initially passed the carbon credit in 2008, Exxon may have claimed hundreds of millions of dollars in tax credits, possibly even more. Since the IRS does not disclose the names of companies that claim the credit, we can't know the exact numbers, which seems like a thing that

shouldn't be true. Claiming a massive tax credit seems like the kind of thing that should be a matter of public record, considering taxes are a thing each and every one of us is required to pay into, and any tax credits you or I claim are required to be disclosed on our tax returns. Real cool bunch of words I just said. Totally awesome country we got here.

So while we have no actual numbers for you, a senior climate campaigner with Greenpeace USA believes that Exxon has possibly claimed the biggest share from the $1 billion of credit that's been awarded over the last 10 years. They think this because the tax credit in question, 4-5-Q, offers a slightly smaller credit for carbon that is put to use rather than permanently stored, which includes that whole carbon capture and enhanced oil recovery thing we just talked about. So Exxon and companies like it can be compensated by the government for keeping carbon out of

the environment and get the social and marketing capital of looking like a climate-friendly corporation and turn around and immediately fart their smelly CO2 back into the environment, all while lobbying against any part of the legislation that would require them to submit monitoring plans to the EPA. And the lobbying works, because in April 2020, the Treasury Department's Inspector General for Tax Administration said that nearly $900 million

of that $1 billion in tax credits did not comply with EPA requirements requirements because the companies just straight up failed to submit monitoring plans. Neat system we have and have always had, no changes. So yeah, companies lie. Big headline there. What of it? What should we do?

Fight them? Fist fight them outside of their offices? Probably, yeah. But I think what might be more constructive for this video is for us to break for an ad and then come back to talk about all the various buzzwords that surround these greenwashing campaigns. You know, your carbon neutrals and tree planting promises.

What do they actually mean? But first, slap your thirst puckered glaring globs on these ads. Talk about your eyeballs. Oh, hello. I didn't see you there because I was too busy drinking this medium sized Mason jar of AG1 by Athletic Greens. And now it's inside of me.

I love it when it's inside of me. You see, champ, I gave AG1 a try because I wanted something green inside of me to line my insides with green, like an inside out Kermit puppet. But also, I take AG1 so I can get all of my vitamins in a single drink form. No more pills for Cody, I'm in the future.

The future of putting vitamins inside of me. Yeah, I can feel it in there. Oh, I can feel it in there! Oh, I can feel it! Along with giving me vitamins, AG1 aids with my gut health. For better gutness, people say I have the strongest gut of anyone they know. They take pictures of my gut.

They are so impressed with it. So if you're looking for an easier way to take supplements, Athletic Greens is giving you a free one year supply of Vitamin D and 5 free travel packs with your first purchase. Go to athleticgreens.com slash more news. That's athleticgreens.com slash more news. Check it out. Hello my sweet buttery viewers! Mmmmm… you know, people say a lot of things. Like how everyone online keeps saying that I'm a cannibal.

That's libel, you know? And it really, really, steams my gourd. Luckily, I take CBD gummies from NextEvo Naturals. For some people, CBD helps with stress and trouble sleeping. The thing is that it's tough to find reliable CBD products, which is why NextEvo doesn't screw around. They test their product multiple times to make sure you're getting what's on their label. They want to be accurate and not throw around a bunch of lies about spotting you under the highway chasing pedestrians. Did I mention they're SmartSorb CBD?

NextEvo claims it makes their CBD have 30 times better absorption in the first 30 minutes. Sounds neato. So upgrade your CBD. Go to NextEvo.com slash more news to get 20% off your first order of $40 or more. Get 20% off your first order of $40 or more. That's 20% off, $40 or more at N-E-X-T-E-V-O dot com slash more news. Do it or I'll eat your family. Nah. I wouldn't do that.

I wouldn't. I wouldn't do that. Hey, goofs. Huh? Welcome back from that thrilling voyage into ad copy. I bet whatever I said really satisfied your needs as a consumer. Back here behind my harrowing news desk, the news continues on. As I promised before those ads that you loved,

we're going to talk about all of the ways that large corporations hide behind various phrases and words to pretend like they are actually helping the environment. Of course, it's not just the environment they do this for, which I might as well note. Blatantly self-serving gestures propping up the hollow idea of the socially conscious company isn't a new thing, as companies have been pretending to care about social and environmental issues for decades.

During World War II, the squeak-wool, private companies like General Motors and Bell Telephone Company leaned heavily on advertising that emphasized buying things as patriotic and supporting the war effort and helping to bolster the economy. And because of the federal rationing program enacted after the US entered the war,

many of the products being advertised weren't even going to be available until after the war ended, which let companies connect beating the Nazis directly to buying our stuff in the minds of consumers. But at least we beat those Nazis and didn't invite some of them into our institutions and they definitely never came back in any shape or form.

Okay, nearly eight decades later, and companies like Amazon tried to use surface level support of the Black Lives Matter movement as a marketing gimmick, claiming to stand, quote, "'In solidarity with the black community "'in the fight against systemic racism and injustice.'" This is despite the fact that Amazon has continuously fought to hamper workers' rights and safety in their factories

where a majority of their black employees work. For International Women's Day in 2020, Shell, another cool-ass oil company, temporarily changed its name to SHIELD, as in the contraction, she will, which is empowering. Is that empowering? She will what?

What will she do? Oh God, what will she do? Tell us, what will she do? Well, apparently what she'll do is use brutal tactics and support violent regimes in poor countries to keep up oil production and exploit the land, resources, and people, which is what she'll has a long history of doing. I guess that is still technically kind of empowering, like the same way becoming Darth Vader is empowering. And of course, who could forget the time Kendall Jenner ended police violence in an ad

that only a coked up Don Draper could invent. We are the movement, this is erasure. You gotta admit, that Pepsi looked crisp. Should have been in a green bottle though. You done fucked up other Coke patooey, you cat. But we're not talking about those embarrassing examples. We're talking about other also embarrassing examples, specific to companies pretending to be eco-friendly.

One of the most common ways businesses try to do that is by claiming to be carbon neutral. The general idea of carbon neutrality is pretty much as simple as it sounds, that a company offsets that same amount of carbon they put into the atmosphere so that their overall impact on the amount of carbon in the environment would be neutral.

But because actually offsetting that much CO2 by themselves can be really difficult, a lot of these companies achieve neutrality via carbon credits. These are purchasable certificates that fund external projects that either lower carbon emissions elsewhere or work to take CO2 out of the air

via carbon capture or other methods, which then count against the paying company's carbon emissions. These external projects can be reforestation, waste and landfill management, or building renewable energy. Basically, any project that a company can fund that will reduce carbon emissions by a given amount. On paper, carbon credits are a pretty decent idea, stamp of approval on that piece of paper that it's written down on.

I mean, you can't actually expect a dildo manufacturer to have the technology to offset their own emissions. They're too busy making disturbingly realistic dragon dicks. This way, a project gets funding, the dragon dick company or other gets credit for reducing emissions, and most importantly, the overall amount of CO2 being spat out into the world goes down a little bit.

It makes sense. Carbon credits are a way for those companies to still make a positive impact without scaling back production. Because this is America, and scaling back production is considered a felony in 30 states. Just like those dragon dicks. See, scaling back is what dragons call doing anal.

Think about it. But the problems with carbon credits arise when you start to take a closer look at the market and realize there are some pretty big flaws with the system. I mean, speaking of anal dragons, Tesla now makes most of their profit by selling these carbon credits. They are basically a carbon credit company at this point,

which sure seems to miss the entire point of this credit system. Also, not all carbon credits are created equal. In fact, some are fake as hell, like the bored apes of carbon credits. Unverified credits are produced by projects that haven't been authorized by a carbon standard or verified by a kind of third party organization.

Sometimes this can just mean it's a little harder to track that project's methodologies. And other times it can mean the entire thing is fraudulent and whoever's buying those credits is getting fleeced like an extremely wealthy sheep. You know, like a sheep with a monocle and at least two dead wives. According to the EPA, a good carbon offset project

should meet five criteria. One, the project has to be real. Seems obvious, but hey, we're regulating a corporation here, so it's probably good to be specific. Two, the carbon reductions have to be permanent. Then comes three, which is that the reductions have to be additional. Two, the carbon reductions have to be permanent. Then comes three, which is that the reductions have to be additional, meaning they wouldn't have happened anyway without the funding from the company. Four is usually next, numerically and in this list, in that they should

be verifiable. And finally, five, they should be enforceable, meaning reductions should be supported by legislation or legal guidelines that help provide a framework for the other four criteria. The issue is that these are hard criteria to meet, in part because that fifth one has been relatively ignored by our super cool and good government. Also, there isn't really much of a framework

to enforce these standards or even a single standard to which all projects are held, which seems both weird and unnecessarily challenging, like playing Pictionary with a Zodiac. This is probably why when a Finnish nonprofit that manages carbon credit projects did a review of over a hundred major projects, it found that just 10% met this criteria. Now, I'm no math guy. My mind

is far from beautiful, and my imaginary friend is a spider-like puppet with an adorable voice that everybody loves. But I'm pretty sure that 10% is way too low, and sucks, and is bad, and fucking sucks. One of the reasons for this frustratingly low number is that a lot of carbon credits go towards forestry and renewable energy projects. While this might sound good if you're a filthy bark scarfing tree lover, plenty of environmental activists

have pushed back against this narrative. In theory, one carbon credit is meant to represent one ton of CO2 emissions absorbed, which is grounded in the notion that fossil carbon and biological carbon are equivalent and interchangeable. That kind of sounds like it probably isn't the case, and according to this article written by 41 scientists, it is not.

When we burn fossil fuels, we're releasing carbon that's part of the slow carbon cycle, which is connected to the natural flow of carbon from Earth's interior via rocks and shit. But we're speeding that up, you see, and we're doing it about 80 times faster than it would naturally happen via volcanoes and shit. Normally, the slow cycle can take up to half a million years for carbon to be reabsorbed into the earth, which means the stuff we release when we burn coal

sticks around a long time. Meanwhile, trees and such are part of the fast biological carbon cycle, which means that carbon capture via trees isn't very permanent when compared to the half-life of the carbon output from fossil fuels. It's like scooping a Dixie cup of water out of a rapidly sinking canoe. An even more apt analogy once the ocean swallows us!

Additionally, some of these forestry projects grant credits based on how much deforestation they think they prevent. Basically, these forest protection groups are funded by companies, and that support counts as a credit. In other words, companies aren't even planting trees themselves, so much as doing napkin math about how many more trees

would have hypothetically been destroyed if these projects weren't around. And of course, one investigation by The Guardian found the reported results of such credits propped up by major airline companies were highly misleading. As in, they often overstated the threat being prevented by these forest protection groups. After all, they're just guessing how many trees might have been raised if they didn't fund these projects.

Not to mention that if a company pulled their support, another company would surely take its place. You'll remember that one of the EPA's five criteria was requiring companies to prove the results of their carbon offset project wouldn't have just happened anyway. Like, you know, like you'd make Tesla cars, you would have done that anyway. But there's no way to prove this when it comes to funding forest protection groups. It's like me pledging to never kiss Oscar Isaac on the lips if this video gets a million views. That first thing probably isn't going to happen

regardless of any action on my part. And at this point, it's clear he either isn't getting my letters or just isn't reading them. So, there goes that dream. A lot of scammy shit around these claims of being carbon neutral. The system is such a Rube Goldberg of asterisks that the phrase lacks all meaning.

Not to mention that planting trees to offset our carbon footprint just isn't very practical. By one calculation, you'd need to plant 200 billion trees to counteract America alone. But also, the math doesn't quite work that way. Newer trees don't consume as much carbon as adult trees, not to mention that trees die, which releases CO2. Not that we shouldn't plant trees, of course.

Like, we should constantly be planting trees and cutting down fewer trees and saving the Amazon and all that. Not that Amazon, yeah, that one, save that one. But it's not a magic solution to offsetting our footprint. Forestation projects can be problematic for a whole host of other reasons, not the least of which is that the only space left

to plant a bunch of trees is on land already used for agriculture, landmarked for restoration due to degradation and protected indigenous land, which you may have noticed is where a bunch of people live. Other than carbon credits, the other major way corporations tend to posture as eco-friendly is with the buzzword recyclable,

which we already talked about in a previous video and also a little bit with the whole Sprite debacle up top. Companies love to brand their products as recyclable and there's no bigger fan of calling things recyclable than the plastic industry itself. Check out this terrifying video of two haunted squirrel carcasses discussing the bodacity of recycling. Hey Stacy what do you think he's doing with that bottle? Oh no he's gonna throw it in the trash. I can't look. Wait, wait. He's putting it in his bag to recycle later.

Way to go, Mr. Brown Shoes. In addition to planting the sweet kiss of eternal nightmares on my cheek, that commercial neglects to mention that recycling plastic is expensive, time-consuming, and not all that efficient. The majority of recycled plastic ends up at the dump or is incinerated anyway.

So it actually doesn't matter how recyclable your plastic water bottle is, since it's either going to choke a penguin or poison an eagle with its fumes. Bottom line, your bottle of smart water is putting a bird into the earth one way or another. And unlike planting a tree, that doesn't count as a carbon credit.

Also those hideous squirrels and their recycling PSA was made by Keep America Beautiful, a non-profit which also happens to have been founded by Coca-Cola and Pepsi, two companies that want to keep us buying cheap plastic soda bottles filled with bubbling sweet poison until the very concept of money ceases to exist. Speaking of things we mentioned earlier, the fast fashion industry is also obsessed with recyclability, claiming to make their materials out of recycled polyester to promote sustainability. What that sounds like they're saying is that old clothes can be recycled into new clothes, thus creating a sustainable cycle. Unfortunately, just like every other claim we have talked about in this episode so far,

this one is also super misleading. According to our good friends at the EPA, only 13% of clothes and footwear were actually recycled in the US in 2018, while the rest were either burned or more likely shoved into a landfill. So what does recycled polyester actually mean? Well, I'll tell you very recent, but still from the past, Cody.

It means clothes that were made from old plastic. In fact, Textile Exchange reported that in 2020, 99% of recycled polyester was sourced from polyethylene terephthalate or PET bottles. While this is technically a good thing, clothing created this way doesn't last very long and can't be recycled more than once before it has to be thrown away

in the aforementioned landfill or your neighbor's backyard or wherever you choose to put your invincible trash. This method of recycling also requires the initial plastic be the same color dye as the final clothing product, which limits the usability of a lot of plastics. When Sprite switched to clear bottles, the goal was to make those bottles more usable in a variety of textiles. But it's such a niche use already that the change ultimately won't make much of a difference.

So, wow. Shit in my ass. Shit your shit into my anus. You know what? Actually actually don't do that. Point is, this has been a bummer. We're going to cool those rage fires with some soothing ads. Also, after these fabled ads, we will talk about the companies out there

that are actually doing things to help and what we can do in general to stop this greenwashing business. But first, let the ads trample you. Look out! But not enough to get out of the way in time! Oh no! You didn't get out of the way in time. You're being trampled by the ads. As a part-time Mr. Bean impersonator, I get into a lot of scuffles. So it's important for me to wear sunglasses that not only complete

the Mr. Bean outfit, but are durable enough for any situation. Luckily, Shady Rays are not only high quality and durable sunglasses, but a fraction of the price of competing brands. Not to mention that if you lose or break them, they will send you a replacement no questions asked. That's good for me, a person who people tend to ask a lot of questions to And what's better than getting one pair of Shady Rays and not worrying if you break them? Why getting two?

Getting two pairs, I say So go to ShadyRays.com slash more news and use code more news And for a limited time, when you buy one pair of Shady Rays, you'll get a second pair free. That's S-H-A-D-Y-R-A-Y-S dot com slash morenews. Code MORENEWS to get a second pair of Shady Rays free. ShadyRays.com slash morenews. Code MORENEWS. Do it for me, America's coolest Mr. Bean. America's coolest Mr. Bean.

Hey, hey, we're back. And hopefully a few carbon credits richer after scarfing down those delicious ads. Mm, mm, mm, mm, mm. So with all of these different ways companies pretend to help the environment, are there any actual ways they can make a difference? Good question, my voice. Curiosity is the sign of a very big brain like mine.

Except for in cats, patooey. So to start, while not perfect, zero waste bulk stores, especially local ones, seem to be a broadly better alternative to standard grocery stores. And in general, becoming more sustainable tends to be good for small local businesses. In fact, shopping local in general seems to be one pretty good answer.

Independent small businesses are almost always more eco-friendly than giant conglomerates like Amazon. However, there are some bigger companies that do seem to be making efforts, which is an extremely low bar to clear, but clear it they have. Subaru recently celebrated their 10 year anniversary of being a zero landfill manufacturer, which means that 100% of their waste

is either recycled or transformed into electricity with dark alchemy. They achieve this by tracking their waste with bar coded containers that are weighed and recorded to keep track of exactly how much waste is being produced by each assembly station. Some materials like packaging are even sent back to the original factory to be reused again and again.

Of course, all this hard work is still being done in the name of manufacturing cars, which are extremely not great for the environment, but hey, good job, I guess, to Subaru. Speaking of sort of doing a good thing, there's also Yvon Chouinard, founder of the clothing brand Patagonia. Yvon announced in late 2022

that he was giving ownership of the company to a quote, "'Specially designed trust and a nonprofit organization "'to ensure all Patagonia's profits, "'about $100 million a year, "'are used to combat climate change.'" Patagonia already profits, about $100 million a year, are used to combat climate change. Patagonia already had a reputation for sustainability, as they were an early adopter of organic cotton and of using recycled polyester in their vests,

which regardless of its minimal impact is still better than non-recycled polyester. Chouinard has said that he hopes this action will help reimagine capitalism as a system in which all profits are reinvested into fighting the climate crisis. Boy, what a cool selfless act that coincidentally lets him avoid $700 million in taxes.

Also, his family will remain on the board of the company and so he's not actually giving up any ownership. So him, actually, okay, so okay. In his defense, that is exactly how the system of capitalism would be reimagined into fighting climate change, by using it as a tax dodge and not actually solving anything. So congratulations, you did it,

you did the thing you wanted to say. Wow, that is the second of the only two examples we have. Wow, that is the second of the only two examples we have. So not actually great in terms of big companies doing good things. Weirdly as if mega corporations are inherently antithetical to sustainability, wouldn't you know? That's, oh, what, is that true? Are they, does it not work together?

Are they butting heads a lot? So if we want to be able to keep eating tater tots on this pale blue dot, we're gonna have to take significantly more drastic steps than a few viral marketing campaigns and tax schemes. We need at least five more of those Pepsi ads. So if we can't depend on the good companies, what can we do?

How do we stop the world from melting? How can I stop the world and melt with you? How can we stop the world and melt with each other? Well first of all, I think we need to be clear on what you can't do. You can't prevent global climate catastrophe by using a metal straw, or turning off your lights, or shopping responsibly at the right eco-friendly zero waste bulk stores. While those things are obviously better than not, the notion that individual action on any scale will be enough on its own is patently absurd. And it's not your responsibility to fix things, as in you, the individual, the consumer, the person watching this while naked.

That's right. I can see that you're naked. the person watching this while naked. That's right, I can see that you're naked. Judgment's still out. The only reason any of these corporations take any kind of action in the first place is to deflect accountability towards the individual consumers and away from themselves. It's a smoke screen designed to keep us

from doing the one thing that might be able to prevent the slow, painful death of the planet. And that is, legislation and collective action. Just once, I want it to be an American Gladiators match or BattleBots or something. The point is, by claiming they are independently doing something about it,

these companies are hoping to be left alone by the government. But their self-policing is about as effective as letting me guard your pile of weed or letting Warmbo guard any egg. Fast fashion and the textile industry at large need more forceful regulation and oversight to require these companies to be transparent

on their supply chain and labor practices. Other countries are, of course, way ahead of us on this. Norway has even threatened economic sanctions against companies, in particular H&M, that make misleading environmental claims in their marketing. A new bill in New York would target brands making at least $100 million in annual revenue

and force them to disclose info on supply chains, carbon emissions, and labor standards. There's even momentum on the federal level to regulate these industries. The Fabric Act, which was introduced to the Senate in 2022, would put pressure on brands to improve their labor practices, and it mirrors a similar bill adopted in California

the year before. More broadly, a federal carbon tax would almost certainly be the most effective way to meaningfully lower emissions. in California the year before. More broadly, a federal carbon tax would almost certainly be the most effective way to meaningfully lower emissions. This would either look like a direct fixed tax on every ton of carbon a corporation emitted, or an emissions trading scheme,

which is a system where the government caps carbon emissions at a specified level for a group of companies or industrial plants, and then requires firms to obtain an allowance for every ton of carbon they want to emit. Each method has its own pros and cons, but either would be a massive improvement over what we have now, which is essentially nothing.

A carbon tax of either of these varieties could significantly reduce emissions by 2030. And frankly, change at that speed is becoming increasingly necessary, if not butt-clenchingly overdue. Yes, butt-clenchingly overdue. Now, corporations and their related stooges, lobbyists, politicians, and weird fanboys of embarrassing billionaires

will argue that legislation like this will hurt profits and therefore hurt employees. But plenty of European countries already have carbon taxes and the recent study showed that they had zero to modest positive impact on GDP and total employment growth rate and found no significant evidence of a negative effect. In fact, the EU recently went a step further and implemented a carbon border tax that places tariffs on non-EU countries that fail to take strict steps to curb greenhouse emissions. If the earth can still be saved, it'll be with massive sweeping changes like this

and arguably even more drastic measures. It certainly won't be saved by hoping enough people drive Subarus and buy recycled clothes. And shopping an H&M or drinking a Sprite once in a while isn't going to permanently doom the planet either. Ethical consumerism is simply inadequate to fix the problem. Individual choices just won't ever make

a meaningful difference on this scale. It will take massive hits to the company's bottom lines before anything changes. Even Bill Gates seems to recognize this, but like every other weirdo billionaire, he thinks the answer is inventing the right cool thing. Start with a web browser that works, egghead. Yeah, you tell him, monkey.

And while it's not anyone's personal responsibility to fix climate change on their own, what you can do is recognize all these hollow gestures for the jolly green giant pile of ass spinach that they are, because it's the responsibility of industry to try and mitigate its own harm on the climate. And it's the government's responsibility to make sure they fucking do it.

You know, laws, regulations and stuff. All those pesky things that get in the way of profits. And I don't wanna sound like a big bearded softy, but this seems like an achievable goal, right? Because for all its hollowness, the fact that these companies are taking any action in the first place means that they know being climate conscious is popular with consumers,

which means it's popular with voters, which means if we can push through all the lobbying and misinformation and general apathy, we can maybe make a change meaningful enough to kickstart the Earth's heart for a little while longer. Like giving cocaine to an elderly horse so it can run another race.

So you can make money, you see, off the horse that you gave cocaine to. But unlike Mama's little Alamo, I'm thinking that Earth won't lose after collapsing dead at the finish line. So there you have it. Environment, saved by me. Just one guy.

Wow. RIP to Mama's Little Alamo. They raced hard and long, and if it wasn't for the cocaine that somebody gave them, they would be here with us still. Congratulations to me for saving the planet, and to you for watching me do that, and to you for liking the planet and to you for watching me do that and to you for liking the video

and subscribing to the channel and leaving a nice comment or a mean one, I don't know, I'm not your boss. We got a patreon.com slash some more news. We have a podcast called Even More News, pronounced better than that, and another podcast, it's this one. It's called Similar News.

And you can listen to both of those where all the podcasts are. And we got merch at a merch store with links available on the screen, probably, hopefully. There's stuff on stuff. We put stuff on stuff and then you can wear it or hold it

depending on what the stuff is. Also, cut.