Hello Comm 486F!
Sep 20th, 2010 by ckyw88
Hey everyone! Thanks for dropping by my blog.
Like many of you, this is my first attempt at a blog. I am glad I can share this experience with all of you and I look forward to reading your blogs as well. 🙂
I suppose I will start my blog by voicing my opinion about some of the topics brought up in class. In particular, regarding the video we watched in class last week. I thought it definitely had many good ideas such as targeting the 100 most influential companies to induce change. However I think it is somewhat naive to think that the rest of the world would just follow them. I think that the speaker’s assumption that ‘the rest of the thousands of companies would need to turn green as a result of a competitive advantage (of being green) from those large companies’ has flaws. People choose certain products over other products not ONLY because they’re environmentally friendly or because they’re Fair Trade Certified. How consumers choose products completely differ between each person. Some may value taste, some may value low price, and some might just buy the one in the shiny packaging! I guess what I am trying to say is that it is all well and great that these large companies are making these movements toward environmental sustainability, but I think it will need much more than just the cooperation of these large conglomerates to persuade the mind of the consumers. I mean, no matter how corporately responsible Mars Bars is, I’ll always prefer Coffee Crisp (unless Coffee Crisp was dumping nuclear waste into baby orphanages or something!)
This brings me to my next point: during that video there was a section where they talked about a chocolate company producing something like 350% more coca with just 40% of the land. This worries me in 2 aspects. First, usually when less is used for more, that entity will tire out or even die at a quicker rate. An example is instead of using two arms to lift, you are using just one arm to lift everything. The earth and soil is a living organism and from the sounds of this type of utilization, it sounds almost dangerous from an ecological perspective. Secondly, if this chocolate company is only using 40% of the land, would they be forgoing that land to another company? Or would they keep it and rotate their crops so that the soil can have some time to replenish in nutrients? If another company takes over just to grow more crops, then it isn’t really addressing the issue of over-using our resources, just merely making their own processes more efficient. I’d just like to hear a little bit more detail about that since I assume they’d mention it if it was something worth mentioning!
Nonetheless… I thought the speech consisted of great ideas and great goals!
I apologize for this pessimistic/critical post, I’ll try to keep future ones more up-beat! =)