Like you might have noticed, the article from the 1st of April Act for a global change was a hoax… A joke for the Fools’ day, but actually about a topic which is kind of not funny at all. Let’s take a quick look today on the real actions and impact of our “great companies” making a difference in the world.

Leaders of a world of consumerism, using and abusing of marketing tools, companies like Coca-Cola or Nestlé are the symbols of an absurd and non sustainable world and they are trying to make us believe that they decided to convert to “green” principles.
While their ideology, products and way of working are everything except sustainable, they use huge amount of money to (green)wash their image with slogans, logos, hypocritical campaigns to pretend that they are acting to save what they are in really destroying… our planet.

When they pretend to thing “green”, they rather think “cash”, using the popular interest (but often very superficial) of masses for sustainability as a line for their advertisements. Their concern is not the reality of their products, but what the public perceives.
Without any scruples, they pretend to be examples of sustainability to reach the sensibility of customers (or their need to feel better by buying “eco” products). Their green actions, designed with nothing more than marketing purposes, are just hiding the disastrous reality. While Nestlé takes water from underground and commercializes it at the expense of local community, and chops down rainforests to produce vegetable oil, Coca-Cola has questionable water use and its packagings have strong environmental impact, and McDonald’s, as a good fast-food purveyor, produces huge quantities of garbage and needs large amounts of cattle whose husbandry generates lots of polution. And that only to give a brief overview…

And it’s difficult to believe that travel companies can pretend to sell “eco” flights. And even more that some of them dare to give “green travel tips” like “Pack light – less weight on flights uses less fuel”, “Bring bio-degradable shampoo and soap”, “Use natural sunscreen and bug-spray” or even “Take the train, shuttle or bus to/from the airport” (more of these amazingly hypocritical tips here). How could that go with the fact than environmental impact of flying is just HUGE? For example, for a same distance, the plane produces 300 times more carbon dioxide than the train!

Most of the time, unlike what is said in their marketing campaigns, the products or services of big companies are absolutely not eco-friendly. But what is even worst, is that companies are spreading worldwide a fake message of sustainability while they are spreading at the same time the message of their deep values: eternal pursuit of profit, unlimited economic growth and exacerbated consumerism. Ideas which simply cannot fit with only one planet, its limited resources and fragile environment.

A global change needs to go through a real turnover in our lifestyles. A superficial “greening” of the actual system cannot be enough and will not have any other impact that making us feel better, while the situation will keep going worst.

If you decide to stop drinking Coca-Cola products, perhaps you can still use coke as pesticides 😉

Amélie