Several articles point out that a recent study by the American Association of Poison Control Centers shows that there were thousands of calls made due to children misusing cleaning products.  Among them, laundry detergent pods are causing more than 700 children ending up in the hospital every year.

Laundry detergent pods are squishy and often bright in color, which means that children often mistake them as toys.  I think the company manufacturing these laundry pods are not responsible for the consumers misusing their products.  The parents are the ones responsible for keeping their children away from eating or playing with the laundry pods.  Although I don’t think that the company is responsible, I should point out and praise them for repacking their products several times, attempting to make it clear that their products need to be kept away from children.  Every time they repackage their products, the number of children injured by the products decrease slightly for a little while.

The thing that shocked me the most in the article was that there was a parent that has mistaken a laundry pod as a chewing toy and fed it to her daughter.  The newborn was severely injured and had to be hospitalized.  Do you think this is the company’s fault?

Taseko Mines Limited is a mining company located in Vancouver, Canada.  It operates the second largest open-pit mine in Canada and has been planning to use Fish Lake as a tailings pond for the New Prosperity Mine.  It first proposed in 2010, proposed for the second time in 2012, and again in late 2013.  All three proposals were rejected by the Ministry of Environment due to evidence suggesting that the mine would cause permanent environmental damage and there was also strong opposition from the members of the Tsilhqot’in in First Nation.  To the Tsilhqot’in, the Fish Lake is sacred and the development will restrict access to “a place of spiritual importance.”

This article on CBC News inspired me to wonder, “where does the balance lie between profitability and sustainability?”  In the past few decades, companies located in North America have became more conscious of environmental consequences of their companies’ decisions.   Several countries have put in carbon tax, carbon credit, and other taxes and fees to limit the amount of pollution each company is allowed to produce.  Personally I think theses implements are brilliant, as it makes companies with high carbon output come up with another way to manufacture their products in a more eco-friendly manner in order to avoid heavy taxes.  This means that they can use materials that are biodegradable, recycle at earlier stage of productions, or come up with an innovative way of producing their products altogether.  However, many companies take advantage or the scarcity of the carbon credits and sell them to commercial and individual customers for profit.

Is it ethical for the companies to trade the carbon credits?  Are the governments indirectly discouraging companies from making an effort to reduce the amount of pollution they produce?  I think there is a limited amount that the government alone can do, and in order for businesses around the world to be environmentally sustainable, the CEO’s have to take initiative and really believe in the importance of making sustainability profitable.