Episode 50 - The Fallout from COVID-19 with Steven Ayer

This is a special episode on COVID-19’s impacts and the prospects for a just recovery, created in partnership with PhiLab, the Canadian Philanthropy Partnership Research Network. In it, we were joined by Steven Ayer, President of Common Good Strategies. The episode draws on Steve’s expertise as the lead researcher and author of the Toronto Fallout Report, which explores the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in Toronto. Rather than putting out a research note for this episode, we invite you to read the report by clicking the link above.

Episode 49 - Cultured Meat

Cultured meat—also called cell-cultured meat, lab meat, in vitro meat, and clean meat—is meat produced through the replication of cells in a lab setting. This quote describes the basic idea:

“By introducing a single cell to the right set of circumstances, it will naturally divide and duplicate many, many times. Once those cells multiply enough times, they organize themselves into a visible mass called tissue. Most of the meat we eat is primarily muscle tissue, which is about 75 percent water, 20 percent protein, 5 percent fat, with a trace amount of carbohydrates.”[1]

How Cultured Meat Works

Culturing meat requires three things: cells, a nutrient-dense liquid medium to feed the cells, and a sterile bioreactor that provides the right conditions for growing cells.[2]

The cells are collected by performing a biopsy on a live animal, or by harvesting tissue from the ovaries of a newly slaughtered animal.[3] The healthiest cells come from a biopsy of a very young animal.[4] Scientists use stem cells, because stem cells can divide and multiply many times, and because they can transform into many different types of cells.[5] Or they can manipulate other cells by de-differentiating and then re-differentiating them.[6]

Culturing beef requires healthier cells than culturing chicken. Avian cells have more plasticity than mammalian cells, so it is easier to get them to do what you want.[7] That means that to culture beef, for example, the source animal has to be young. That isn’t necessary for bird cells.[8]

There are two schools of thought on how to ensure a steady supply of cells.[9] One is to collect cells from an animal farm every couple of months. Another option is to create an immortal cell line, which would eliminate the need to perform a biopsy on a live animal. Option two is better because it is cheaper, more consistent, and easier to scale. There are no truly immortal cell lines yet, but the science is getting closer.

Okay, onto the growth medium. Cell culturing used to require fetal bovine serum—blood drawn from the fetus of a cow—as a medium. That shit’s expensive ($1,150 for four cups)[10] and also cruel. To make cultured meat affordable, companies have had to find alternatives to this. The makeup of growth medium is a closely guarded trade secret, but companies like Eat Just claim to have engineered suitable plant-based or synthetic liquid mediums. Which makes sense, since the price of production has fallen. The medium is the biggest factor in pricing cultured meat.

The last ingredient is the bioreactor, which is a big container that functions sort of like a sort of mechanical cow.[11] The bioreactors in Future Meat Technologies, for example, can theoretically grow the equivalent of 1,500 chickens in just a few weeks.[12]

The main challenge with bioreactors is creating environments that allow for cells to replicate with minimal disturbances, which is tricky because cells like to grow in clumps but they also need access to the liquid medium and oxygen.[13] So, the bioreactors have to stir the liquid and keep the cells from sticking to the sides, without damaging the cells.[14] When cells are ready to be harvested they are separated from the medium through whirling the bioreactor at high speeds, so the cells spatter against the walls.

The Race to Bring Lab Grown Meat to Market

Cell culturing has a long scientific history, but culturing meat for human consumption has only recently become technologically possible.

The scientific background on cell-culturing dates back to 1885, when zoologist Wilhelm Roux extracted tissue from a live chicken embryo and maintained it in a saline solution for several days.[15] Advances in cell culturing occurred throughout the 20th century. For example, the surgeon Alexis Carrel sustained a piece of embryonic chicken heart tissue for thirty-four years starting in 1912.[16] Technological leaps in cell culturing brought major advances in medical research, but the prospect of lab-cultured meat remained a distant possibility.

But that changed. In the 1970s, researchers started growing muscle fibres in vitro.[17] The first patents for the process of culturing meat were approved in 1999.[18] In 2002, a scientist named Morris Benjaminson cultured the muscle tissue of a goldfish in a petri dish.[19] The project was funded by a $62,000 grant from NASA, which was interested in food alternatives to sustain astronauts on long space journeys.[20] The fish was fried in olive oil, garlic, lemon, and pepper. Researchers were not allowed to taste them because the product had not been approved by the FDA, but Benjaminson said “they looked and smelled just like fish fillets”.[21]

The first cultured meat that we know was consumed is cultured frog meat created by an Australian artist named Oron Catts. Catts served the frog meat to six guests in 2003 as part of an exhibit to draw attention to the hypocrisy required to love and respect animals yet also eat them.[22] 

The science really accelerated in the last two decades. In 2013 Mark Post presented the first cell-cultured hamburger at a televised event in London. The burger was made with cultured beef muscle tissue and cost over $300 000 to make.

There has been a race to get the first cultured meat to market. Since 2015 more than $100 million has been invested in cell-cultured meat by venture capitalists and existing food giants like Tyson Foods.[23] The cost of making cell-cultured meat has dropped from $1.2 million per pound to $50 per pound today.[24]

Major cell-cultured meat companies include: Eat JUST, Memphis Meats, Finless Foods, Mission Barns, Mosa Meat, Aleph Farms, and Future Meat Technologies. Four are based in the US, three are Israeli, and the remaining two are based in the Netherlands and Japan.[25] Most of the cultured meat companies are start-ups, but Eat JUST is a plant-based food company that has been selling condiments like Mayonnaise for quite some time.[26]

Cultured meat has overcome significant scientific barriers. While there is still much more work to be done to improve cultured meat, products are ready for the market. The reason these products are not widely available is regulatory hurdles

The first cell-cultured meat was sold in December 2018 in the Netherlands by Eat JUST—although this does not really count because the Netherlands food regulator . JUST was testing whether it could be grandfathered into old regulations before a new EU law came into effect, but the government did not interpret the rules the same way. 

So, Eat JUST had to wait another two years to sell cultured meat legally—which it did in December 2020 in Singapore. Singapore recently approved the first cultured meat for sale. The approved product is called “chicken bites” and is a sort of chicken nugget. The chicken bites are not yet widely available, but they are being sold at a restaurant in Singapore.

Why Cell-Cultured Meat?

Proponents generally advance three arguments for cell-cultured meat: animal welfare, climate change, and human hunger.

Animal Welfare

It’s no accident that the founders of cultured meat start-ups tend to be vegans. We have discussed the harms of animal agriculture on the show before. The living conditions on factory farms are horrific, and the vast majority of meat available on the market is from factory farms.

Every year, an estimated 65 billion land animals are killed for human consumption. And if you think that’s a lot, let me tell you about fish: more than 1 trillion fish are killed every year in fishing operations—and that doesn’t even include aquaculture.[27] Proponents of cell-cultured meat envision a future where that harm isn’t necessary.

Climate Change

Taking animals out of the equation also has immense potential benefit for the planet. Animal agriculture is responsible for an estimated 14% of greenhouse gases. A single 1,200-pound cow produces about 100 kilograms of methane, which is roughly equivalent to a car burning 230 gallons of gasoline.[28]

Animal agriculture is inherently wasteful. “It takes about 6 pounds of animal feed to produce 1 pound of beef, 3.5 pounds of feed for 1 pound of pork, and 2 points for a single pound of chicken. Animal agriculture relies on growing plant protein—vast fields of corn and soybeans—only to cycle it through an animal that has to be killed to yield less weight in food than the plants it ate.”[29]  

In William Gibson’s The Neuromancer, a cyborg character named Molly takes conventionally grown steak from a plate and says, “Gimme that. You know what this costs? They gotta raise a whole animal for years and then they kill it. This isn’t vat stuff.”

Speculative data from a 2011 study by University of Oxford researcher Hannah Tuomisto found that cultured meat could “require 45 percent less energy, produce 96 percent less greenhouse gas, and use 99 percent less land and 96 percent less water than […] current agricultural operations”.[30] That study might be slightly too optimistic, since it assumes companies are using the most environmentally friendly medium, but in any case there are substantial environmental benefits from cultured agriculture over conventional animal farming.

Human Hunger

The godfather of the cultured meat movement is a man named Willem van Eelen, and his motivation was primarily to address world hunger. As a POW in Japan during the Second World War, van Eelen experienced starvation and saw what it did to the people around him. He spent his life raising money for research into cell-cultured meat.[31]

Cultured meat is also theoretically safer, since it is produced in sterile conditions and thus is not exposed to pathogens. So, no need to use antibiotics, which could also help to prevent antibiotic resistance. But we also don’t really know whether there will be any long-run health effects from cultured meat.

Endnotes

[1] Purdy, Chase. (2020). Billion Dollar Burger: Inside Big Tech’s Race for the Future of Food. New York: Penguin Randomhouse LLC at p.30.

[2] Purdy, Billion Dollar Burger.

[3] Purdy, Billion Dollar Burger.

[4] Purdy, Billion Dollar Burger.

[5] Purdy, Billion Dollar Burger.

[6] Purdy, Billion Dollar Burger.

[7] Purdy, Billion Dollar Burger.

[8] Purdy, Billion Dollar Burger.

[9] Purdy, Billion Dollar Burger.

[10] Purdy, Billion Dollar Burger at p.37.

[11] Purdy, Billion Dollar Burger.

[12] Purdy, Billion Dollar Burger at p.40.

[13] Purdy, Billion Dollar Burger.

[14] Purdy, Billion Dollar Burger.

[15] Reese, Jacy. (2018). The End of Animal Farming. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.

[16] Reese, The End of Animal Farming.

[17] Reese, The End of Animal Farming.

[18] Purdy, Billion Dollar Burger.

[19] Purdy, Billion Dollar Burger.

[20] Purdy, Billion Dollar Burger.

[21] Reese, The End of Animal Farming p.74.

[22] Reese, The End of Animal Farming.

[23] Purdy, Billion Dollar Burger.

[24] Purdy, Billion Dollar Burger.

[25] Purdy, Billion Dollar Burger.

[26] Purdy, Billion Dollar Burger.

[27] Purdy, Billion Dollar Burger.

[28] Purdy, Billion Dollar Burger at p.7.

[29] Purdy, Billion Dollar Burger at p.7.

[30] Purdy, Billion Dollar Burger at p.14.

[31] Purdy, Billion Dollar Burger.

Episode 48 - Chocolate with Samantha Luc

For this episode we were joined by Samantha Luc to talk about chocolate. Samantha is a former professional chocolate eater! She used to be the Head of Traceability and Tastings and Education at Soma Chocolatemaker. Now she is working with companies across a variety of industries to support their traceability efforts with Wherefour ERP.

Here are Kristen’s research notes in preparation for this episode.

Chocolate: The Basics

The essential ingredient in chocolate is fermented and roasted seeds of the theobroma cacao tree.[1] 90% of the world’s cacao is grown by 2.5 million farmers working 5-10 acre family plots.[2]

Today, most of the farms are in Western Africa.[3] The top four cocoa producing countries are all in Western Africa: Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Nigeria, and Cameroon. That is due to an increase in cocoa production in Western Africa, while chocolate production has remained stable throughout most of the world. The market share of Western African cocoa has increased from 55% to 74% since 1990. And in particular, Western Africa is a major supplier of ‘bulk cocoa’, as compared with fine or flavour cocoa. Western Africa produces more than 80% of bulk cocoa.

Once cacao beans are harvested, they are fermented, dried, roasted, crushed, and ground into cocoa powder.

History of Chocolate

Chocolate has been consumed since at least 1500 BC. It originates in Meso-America, where it was initially consumed by the Olmec, and later the Maya and the Aztec, as a drink (xocolatl, or bitter water). Chocolate was used as a currency and in rituals.

Much like sugar, chocolate was at first reserved for the elites in Europe.[4]  In the mid-1800s, aided by technological innovation, chocolate started to become a product consumed by mainstream Europeans.[5] 

Around that time there was also invention of the chocolate bar, which is how we mostly think about chocolate today. The first chocolate bar was made and sold by Fry and Sons in 1847 and in 1875 Henri Nestlé developed milk chocolate.

And in order to increase crop yields, cacao production shifted from the criollo variety to the forastero, which is dominant today.[6] Criollo cacao is typically seen as better tasting, but forastero cacao is easier to grow and produces a higher yield. (However, there is some dispute about this and cacao varieties can taste quite different depending on where they are grown).

People and Chocolate

Chocolate and Colonialism

Chocolate production and colonialism are inextricably connected. Chocolate was brought to Europe by Christopher Columbus. And colonialism changed the geography of chocolate production. The expansion of cacao production, especially in the 20th century largely occurred in Western Africa rather than Central and South America, where cacao trees are native.

The first large scale production of cacao in Africa began in the Portuguese plantations found on Sao Tome and Principe. Colonial governments were often responsible for coercion and dangerous working conditions on cacao plantations.

Cocoa Producers and Poverty

Since the 1980s, the average cocoa price has halved (adjusted for inflation). This is a problem because low prices push cocoa producers into situations of poverty.

In Ghana, cocoa is supply managed through a managing board called Cocobud, which buys all of the cocoa and sells it at a fixed price. Côte d’Ivoire liberalised under pressure from the IMF in the 1990s, but is now starting to re-regulate prices. Both countries have agreed to a minimum export price of $2,600/tonne, which a ‘Living Income Differential’ of $400/tonne to be used to guarantee that farmers receive about $1,800/tonne. Although this is good news, $2,600/tonne is about the same price farmers received before the cocoa price collapsed in 2016 – and back then cocoa farmers’ average incomes were below the $2.40 per day threshold for extreme poverty.

Child Labour

Child labour is endemic to cacao production in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana. A survey done by researchers at the University of Chicago and commissioned by the US Department of Labor, 45% of children living in agricultural households in cocoa growing areas were engaged in child labour. Child labour in cocoa has actually increased by an estimated 14% in the last decade.

Environment and Chocolate

Deforestation is a huge global issue: in 2017, for example, 40 football fields worth of tropical forest were lost every single minute. This isn’t all from chocolate, but I think it’s important to put deforestation in context.[7] About 40% of Ivorian cocoa is estimated to have come from inside protected forest areas (making it illegal).

Challenge

Kristen’s Challenge

My ethical chocolate is a Camino brand dark hot chocolate mix that I bought from my local waste-free grocery store. All of its ingredients (except sea salt) have organic certification, Fairtrade Certification or both. The cocoa is from CONACADO (the National Confederation of Dominican Cacao Producers), which is an organization of small-scale cacao producers in the Dominican Republic. The sugar is from a worker co-operative in Paraguay called Manduvirá.

Camino is a brand that’s run by an Ottawa-Gatineau-based co-operative called La Siembra. They were North America’s first importers of Fairtrade Certified cocoa and sugar. La Siembra see themselves as “100% fair-trader[s]”. They use Fairtrade Certified ingredients in all of their products, and they aim to build direct relationships with small-scale co-operative producers as much as possible. They are also supporting a new fair trade certification called SPP (the Small Producers Symbol), which is the first fair trade farmer-owned certification system and is seen as a more robust fair trade standard.

Endnotes

[1] Secret Life of Chocolate. Part 1: Origins. (6 December 2020). The Food Programme, BBC Radio Four.

[2] How Chocolate Works. (19 November 2013). Stuff You Should Know Podcast.

[3] “How Chocolate Works”, Stuff You Should Know.

[4] “Secret Life of Chocolate. Part 1: Origins”, The Food Programme.

[5] “Secret Life of Chocolate. Part 1: Origins”, The Food Programme.

[6] “Secret Life of Chocolate. Part 1: Origins”, The Food Programme.

[7] Chocolate and Sustainability. (18 November 2019). Business Wars Podcast.

Episode 47 - Biogas with Peter Harris

Kyla and Kristen are joined by Peter Harris, who explains how biowaste can be turned into energy through a process called anaerobic digestion.

Peter Harris is a post-doctoral research fellow for the Centre for Agricultural Engineering. He works on the energy and bio resource recovery team.

When Kristen asked him about using anaerobic digestion in the household, he pointed us to a paper he wrote called Biogas in the Suburbs. He pointed out that the best way to utilize this technology isn’t to use it at home, but to push cities to incorporate it into their waste management systems.

Kyla hosted this episode and prepared nothing, so the notes here are short. Check out the links for more information!

Episode 46 - Winter Gear

Winter Coats

How Are Winter Coats Made?

Winter jackets tend to be either wool overcoats or what I’m going to call ski jackets – coats made from a waterproof synthetic fabric and stuffed with insulation. Sometimes these are called “parkas”, when they have a fur-lined hood. Personally, I have both a wool overcoat and a ski jacket, and I would only truly classify the ski jacket as a winter coat. My wool overcoat is not great when it’s -25.

Want to know how winter jackets are made? Check out this video. Ski jackets are made primarily using synthetic petroleum-based fabrics. There are two components: an insulated jacket and an outer windbreaker, which is waterproof. The inner insulated jacket is made with a nylon lining as well as either down or a synthetic insulation. The outer layer is usually made from a waterproof petroleum-based synthetic fabric.

Choosing an Ethical Winter Coat

As far as I know it’s impossible to find a ski jacket that is plastic-free. Right now, there is no good alternative to synthetic fabrics for waterproofing and stopping the wind. Wool jackets can be plastic-free. But they don’t serve exactly the same purpose, so it’s not really fair to do a side-by-side comparison. 

So, I think the best you can do is to follow the principles for ethical clothing more broadly: consume less, look for second-hand, avoid fast fashion, and research companies beforehand. Ethical Consumer doesn’t have a rating for winter coats specifically, but their waterproof and insulated coats ranking does include some of the big winter jacket producers. Check out Good On You’s guide to ethical winter coat brands.

And then, try to make your winter jacket last as long as possible. A good winter coat can last 20-30 years, so it’s important to learn how to take care of it. Good On You recommends cleaning your coat at the beginning and end of the season, using a professional wet cleaning service rather than dry cleaning. They also recommend sealing the coat in a garment bag at the end of the season, using cedar balls to repel moths.

Winter Jackets and Animal Down

Winter jackets need to be warm, which means that they need a good insulator. Although there are synthetics available, a lot of winter jackets are stuffed with animal down. Down refers to the plumage found underneath the exterior feathers of geese and duck, which is used to insulate jackets, duvets, pillows, and sleeping bags. As you might imagine, down production is not especially nice for the birds.

So, one major question when choosing a winter jacket is whether to go with a coat that is insulated with down or a synthetic insulator? In other words, is there such a thing as responsible down?

It’s important to start by noting that outdoor gear is a relatively small component of the down industry. Most of down (about 90%) is used for bedding.

Down for jackets, sleeping bags, and duvets is often extracted by plucking live animals. Sometimes a goose will be plucked multiple times throughout their life, which is obviously a painful and traumatic experience for them.

Beyond plucking, we have to consider the conditions in which these geese and ducks live. And that means confronting our old friend, animal agriculture. Down is a waste product. No one raises ducks and geese for their feathers; they are raised for meat production and the feathers are sold as a by-product. Like chickens, geese and ducks are often factory farmed – which means living in cramped, uncomfortable conditions and never living a normal ducky life. In addition, geese and duck that are cultivated for foie gras are often the victims of force-feeding.

There has been some movement on the issue of live-plucking in the last decade.  Patagonia got in trouble in 2011 PETA investigation found that its down was being sourced from a facility in Hungary that used live-plucking. That prompted outdoor gear companies to take action on animal welfare in down production.

Now there are three humane down standards that, at least, require that the animal was killed before its feathers were plucked. The three humane down standards were initiated by different outdoor brands.

o   The Traceable Down Standard was created by Patagonia.

o   Responsible Down Standard was created by the North Face.

o   Down Codex is the standard created by MEC.

Patagonia’s Traceable Down Standard is the most rigorous of the three. But even that standard only bans live-plucking and force-feeding. Otherwise, producers are only required to meet local regulations. The animal rights group Four Paws recommends against using down at all, but they say that all three down standards do a reasonably good job of ensuring that no live-plucking occurs.

China now produces 80% of the world’s down. A PETA investigation found that half of the 66 Chinese suppliers they contacted still sold live-plucked down. And beyond the issue of live plucking, we still have the problem that geese and ducks may live in inhumane conditions while they are cultivated for meat production. In my own view, then, there is no such thing as responsible down.

Ok, so if down is inhumane why do companies still use it? A lot of companies are moving away from the use of down. (Here’s a guide to the best down alternative coats). But there are two trade-offs that keep down in jackets: quality and sustainability.

Let’s start with quality. Down is still the most efficient insulator available. Down has a higher warmth-to-weight ratio than the best synthetics – although some synthetic fillings are now comparable to medium-quality down and are also generally cheaper. The quality of synthetics is improving, and in time they may overtake down from a quality perspective. For now, though, there is a quality trade-off. And the big question that people have to ask themselves is whether it’s really important to have a coat that is slightly warmer or lighter. For mountaineers or people spending a lot of time on the tundra, maybe that is a fair trade-off. But for most of us, the quality difference probably is not all that significant.

Another trade-off in choosing down versus synthetics is environmental: most synthetic alternatives are petroleum-based. Most synthetic insulation uses polyester strands. Each brand uses a different size and shape. The most widely used are Thinsulate, FullRange, PolarTec Alpha, and PrimaLoft. PrimaLoft is the most well-known of the synthetic insulators. It was developed in the 1980s for the US Army and is used by more than 500 brands worldwide.

And synthetics tend not to last as long, which is a bit of a dilemma for winter clothing producers. A life cycle assessment commissioned by the International Down and Feather Bureau (so note the possibility of bias) found that on a per ton basis down is more sustainable than polyester.

There are some synthetic insulators that use recycled materials. One example is PrimaLoft’s Eco series. So, that is a good option. But you still have to deal with the issue of microfibres, and recycled content still adds to the profitability of fossil fuels. So, it’s not perfect.

So, neither down nor synthetic insulators are great for the environment. The best thing you can do from an environmental perspective is to extend the use of whichever insulator you choose. That means taking care of your jacket, so it lasts as long as possible. And next time you need a winter coat, look for second-hand options. 

Snow Boots

So, winter boots and snow boots are actually not the same thing. While both boots are designed to keep your feet warm, snow boots are also waterproof with a rubber bottom. Snow boots are also typically taller – no one likes a wet ankle in January. A lot of the ethical guides out there focus on winter boots, rather than snow boots. For example, here is a list of recommended winter boots from Good On You.

The base of a snow boot is made with rubber. Unfortunately, I was not able to find much on how to find boots that have been made with ethically sourced rubber. The sustainability of natural rubber depends on where and how it is produced. Unfortunately, natural rubber production is a leading cause of deforestation in Southeast Asia. This is an issue that hopefully will have more traction in the future. But in the meantime, you can look for recycled rubber. Timberland is one company that uses recycled rubber (specifically Green Rubber).

The top of a snow boot is made from either leather or synthetic materials like nylon.

Winter and snow boots both use insulation, which can be foam, synthetic fleece, or sheepskin. My vegan winter boots from Kamik use a synthetic liner called Zylex, which uses 97% recycled materials and is made from polypropylene, polyester, and a thermal foil. They use something they call RubberHE for the bottom, which they claim is 100% recyclable. Although there is not a lot of information on sourcing, sustainability seems to be something they take seriously. They are working toward a zero-waste production facility, and they have a recycling program.

Winter Boots and Leather and Sheepskin

Is there such a thing as responsible leather? 

About half of the leather that is produced is used for footwear. As with down, leather and sheepskin are by-products from meat production. Most leather is produced from cow hide, but goats, pigs, and sheep are also common sources. Most cow leather comes from either meat or dairy cows. Some comes from calves used for veal. Leather accounts for about 10% of an animal’s total value – so while leather is a by-product, it does contribute to making animal farming more profitable.

Most leather is produced in countries with animal welfare laws that are even weaker than those in Canada, the US, and the EU. After an animal is skinned, leather production is made up of three steps: preparation, tanning, and crusting. Then, depending on how the leather is going to be used, a finishing process involves applying a surface coating of some kind. Here’s a video on how leather is made.

Environmentally speaking, leather is a problem because of its links to animal agriculture, which is a huge source of greenhouse gas emissions, water pollution, and deforestation (as we’ve discussed in previous episodes on alternative milks and vegetarianism and alternative milks).

But also: the leather production process has a high environmental impact due to the heavy use of polluting chemicals in the tanning process. Tanning is treating the leather so that it doesn’t decompose. Tanning processes use polluting and in some cases toxic chemicals, which are then released into the air, ground, and water supply.

Working conditions on tanneries are also bad. Child labour is common and the working conditions are hazardous. So, if you are going to buy a product with leather, look for second-hand or Fairtrade certified leather.

The 2017 Pulse of the Fashion Industry report did a side-by-side comparison of leather and polyurethane synthetic leather. The result was clear: cow leather was the most environmentally harmful material included in their ranking, while synthetic leather ranked sixth. Synthetic leather was better for the environment on all four metrics: water scarcity, greenhouse gas emissions, eutrophication, and resource depletion.

The one drawback with plastics-based synthetic leather is that it won’t biodegrade. But generally, animal leather is the worse environmental choice. And there are promising vegan leathers that are made from plants, and which use plastics only to hold the fibres together. Piñatex is one example. Vegan leathers do still have issues with toxic chemicals use. 

Okay, but what about sheepskin? Sheep farmers raise sheep for either wool or food. Sheepskin is used from farmers that raise sheep primarily for food. So, yes: the sheep die. Sheep are typically not kept in factory farms, so the animal welfare concerns are less dire. However, sheep do commonly have their tails docked and male sheep are castrated.

Episode 45 - 2020 Wrap-up Quiz

In this episode, Kyla and Kristen say goodbye to 2020 with a wrap-up quiz, featuring previous guests Brianna Botchwey, Fariya Mohiuddin, and Alexandra Sundarsingh. The group looks back at ethical consumption trends and issues from throughout the year.

Question 1. Which company has benefitted the most financially from the pandemic?

A: Amazon, which added $401.1 billion in 2020.

Details

• Followed by Microsoft ($270 billion), Apple ($219 billion), Tesla ($108 billion), and Tencent ($93 billion)

• Jeff Bezos’ net worth increased $48 billion from March to June 2020.

• Seven of the world’s 50 richest people have increased their net worth by more than 50% since the pandemic began.

You can play the game You Are Jeff Bezos for a quick fun tutorial on why billionaires shouldn’t exist.

Revisit our episode on tax justice with Fariya!

Question 2. Which team started the NBA players’ wildcat strike when they refused to take the floor for a playoff game on August 26?

A: the Milwaukee Bucks

Details

• The wildcat strike was a response to the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, WI on 23 August 2020

• They were set to play game 5 of their playoff series against the Orlando Magic.

• The three remaining games that day were also postponed.

Question 3. Name the top five sugar producing countries.

A:

• Brazil

• India

• China

• Thailand

• USA

Revisit our episode on sugar with Lex!

Question 4. Which major Canadian co-operative was recently sold to a US private investment firm?

A: MEC

Question 5. We’ve talked about thrift shopping a lot on the show. In what year was Macklemore’s Thrift Shop released?

A: 2012

Revisit our episode with Brianna on exclusion and privilege in ethical consumption, with a focus on the fashion industry!

Question 6. In our second episode of the podcast, we talked about alternative milks. One alternative milk company is facing calls of a boycott recently after accepting $200 million in investment from the private equity firm Blackstone. Name that plant milk brand.   

A: Oatly

Details

• Ethical Consumer is not particularly concerned about this development, and it only slightly affects their rating for Oatly.  

Question 7. Farmers in Denmark recently killed 17 million of which animal because of coronavirus outbreaks on farms? 

A: Mink

Details

• More than 200 COVID-19 cases in the country were linked to sick mink on fur farms in Denmark. The mink initially caught the virus from humans.

• Part of the reason that the virus spread so quickly is that farmed mink are not genetically diverse, which can make them more susceptible to disease transmission. The same is true of other kinds of animal farming.

• Mink fur is used in some fake eyelash products, especially in China and Hong Kong.

• Denmark is the world’s largest mink fur producer. It has 1,000 mink farms out of 4,350 across Europe.

• Fur production is banned in the UK, Austria, and Germany, while Belgium, France, and Norway are phasing it out. The Netherlands announced plans to shut down its mink industry by 2021.

Question 8. This fall the Government of Canada reaffirmed its commitment to implementing a ban on single-use plastics. For one point each, can you name any items that will be banned?

A:

• Checkout bags

• Stir sticks

• Beverage six-pack rings

• Cutlery

• Straws

• Food packaging made from plastics that are difficult to recycle

Bonus: can anyone name a form of plastic that Canada has already banned?

A: Microbeads

Details

• The ban is set to take effect by the end of 2021.

• The EU will also have a ban on single-use plastics items by 2021. There are bans on single-use plastics in Kenya, Zimbabwe, the UK, New York, California, and Hawaii, China, and numerous other locations.

Question 9. There are 7.8 billion people in the world and 2,153 billionaires. If you combine the estimated wealth of those 2,153 billionaires, it exceeds the wealth of how many people?

A: 4.6 billion people

Details

• The world’s richest 1% have more than twice as much wealth as 6.9 billion people.

• The combined wealth of the world’s 22 richest men is more than the wealth of all the women in Africa.

Winner: Brianna

Brianna asked us to donate to the Iqaluit Humane Society, as they’re raising money for a new shelter! What a rad charity, Kyla and Kristen were happy to each make a donation as the quiz prize!

Episode 44 - Holiday Episode: Ethical Past, Present, and Future

Nothing about the holidays will be normal this year, but we still wanted to do a holiday episode. So, this year we’re riffing off of A Christmas Carol. Joined by past guest Robert Miller, we’re going to bring you stories of ethical consumption past, present, and future.

Ethical Consumption Past: The National Consumers’ League’s White Label Campaign

Kristen’s story of ethical consumption past is about the White Label, which is an ethical label created in the 1890s by the National Consumers’ League under the leadership of a badass named Florence Kelley.

The White Label campaign is a good example of how consumer power can be partnered with labour activism and lobbying to secure genuine change. It also offers a road map for change now that there has been a return to sweat shop conditions under globalization.

Florence Kelley

Florence Kelley (1859-1932) was a feminist, a social democrat, and an all-around bad ass. She was one of the leading figures in America’s Progressive Era (1890-1920), which saw the expansion of state authority in the workplace.[1]

Florence Kelley was the daughter of a pro-labor Republican congressman. Her parents were both abolitionists and supported Kelley’s interest in education and women’s rights. So, Kelley was immersed in social activism from a young age.[2]

Kelley grew up in Philadelphia and graduated from Sage College at Cornell in 1882.[3] (It was rare for women to go to university at the time). She was denied admission to graduate study at the University of Pennsylvania, so she studied law and government at the University of Zurich, one of few European universities that admitted women.[4] She became frustrated by barriers to women’s participation in public life, which prompted her to join the Social Democratic Party.[5] She became increasingly critical of her father’s political compromises, and cut off contact with her family in Philadelphia.[6]

Kelley married a socialist medical student from Russia, had three children, and her family moved to New York. She eventually re-established contact with her family just before her father’s death in 1890, and in his pro-labor tradition she became an expert on child labor.[7]

When her husband became abusive, she and her children escaped to Chicago, where she joined a community of women reformers at a place called Hull House.[8] Kelley quickly became a leader in Chicago’s anti-sweatshop movement. One of her first contributions was a report called ‘The Sweating System of Chicago’, written for the Illinois Bureau of Statistics of Labor, which established the need for government intervention to stop labor abuse in sweatshops.[9]

Kelley was once described as “the toughest customer in the reform riot, the finest rough-and-tumble fighter for the good life for others, that Hull House ever knew. Any weapon was a good weapon in her hand – evidence, argument, irony or invective.”[10]

That report was one of several pressures that led to an inquiry into sweatshops and tenement-house labor.[11] The committee recommended anti-sweatshop legislation that closely resembled draft legislation submitted by Kelley, which was passed as the Factory and Workshop Bill of 1893 in Illinois.[12]

“It established eight hours as the legal limit of the working day for women, restricted child labor, and created a factory inspection office to which Kelley was appointed in 1893. Although federal workers had benefited from eight-hour legislation since the 1860s, and although skilled workers (in the building trades for example) obtained an 8-hour day through the power of unions and the threat to strike, unskilled workers, especially women, customarily labored between ten and fourteen hours a day. Because child and women workers were crowded into a few occupations and were therefore easily replaced, it was difficult for them to form unions or to negotiate with employers by threatening to strike. Illinois legislators tried to bring the benefits of shorter hours to women and children who were unable to achieve those benefits through unions or strikes.”[13]

The most controversial element of the law was an eight-hour workday for women.[14]

Kelley was selected to be the Chief Factory Inspector for the state of Illinois. She was the first woman to hold this position. As Chief Factory Inspector, she unsuccessfully sued several businesses for failing to uphold the 8-hour workday. The Illinois Supreme Court found the hours law unconstitutional (because of a bullshit finding that it violated the fourteenth amendment – the equal protection clause).[15] Kelley’s frustration led her to become a lawyer. She graduated with a law degree from Northwestern University in 1895.

I read some testimony from Kelley’s factory inspections, and it was pretty gross and heartbreaking. There are stories of horribly disfigured young children, with no access to health or sanitation, working in candy, garment, and button factories.

Kelley’s investigations also made her aware of how racism affected working conditions, and she worked to combat racism as well.

Kelley moved to New York in 1899 to head the newly founded National Consumers League, which became the leading advocacy organization for protective labor legislation.[16] She remained in that role until she died in 1932.

Kelley was instrumental in establishing a national minimum wage, legislating maximum working hours, and creating the US Children’s Bureau.

She was one of the founding members of the NAACP and the Women’s International League of Peace, founded the National Labor Committee, and served as vice present of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. 

‘The Sweating System’

In part one of our fast fashion series, we talked about sweatshops and their transformation from the Industrial Revolution to today. As a refresher, though, the invention of the lockstitch sewing machine in the 1830s led to the mechanization of clothes-making. By the end of the 1800s, many people worked in unsafe and exploitative conditions at garment factories around the western world.

Florence Kelley called this the ‘sweating system’. I’m going to quote from her description of this system and its causes:

“The ‘sweating system’ is one of respectable antiquity and is a surviving remnant of the industrial system which preceded the factory system, when industry was chiefly conducted on the piece price plan in small shops or the homes of the workers. Machinery developed the modern factory and concentrated labor, but in the tailoring trades, the practice of sending out garments, ready-cut, to be made by journeymen at their homes and at a price per garment, has survived and is still maintained in custom work, in which the journeyman is still a skilled tailor who makes the whole garment. The modern demand for ready-made clothing in great quantities and of the cheaper grades has, however, led to much subdivision of the labor on garments, and with it to the substitution of the contractor or sweater, with groups of employés in separate processes, for the individual tailor, skilled in all of them.”[17]

The National Consumers’ League

The consumers’ league movement started in New York in 1896. It began with a small group of women, headed by Josephine Shaw Lowell, who campaigned to set a fair wage for sales girls and cashiers at department stores.[18]

But by the end of the century, consumers’ leagues became a powerful force in American politics. Consumers’ leagues were organizations that fought for the welfare of consumers and workers who had little voice or power in the marketplace and workplace. They especially fought for women and children, who were less able to unionize and so to achieve gains through collective action.

As activist Josephine Goldmark described it, the rise of consumers’ leagues “marked […] the beginning of a new era; the appearance, for the first time, of the consumer, as such, on the national scene; for the first time articulate. By persuasion, by presenting the facts and then by supporting legislation – for they were not too naïve – the consumers’ leagues sought to relieve the consciences of those who did not want to buy the products of sweatshop and child labor.” [19]

The consumers’ league movement started in New York, but it soon spread to Massachusetts, Illinois, and Pennsylvania. The National Consumers’ League was founded in 1898. Florence Kelley was appointed the first secretary of the NCL in 1899.

Under Kelley’s tenure, the NCL established 64 consumer leagues across America.[20] In the organization’s first five years, Kelley focused on building a grassroots movement.  By 1906 there were 63 locals in 20 states with 7,000 members.[21]

The NCL’s early work concentrated on influencing consumer behaviour, but the organization expanded its work to focus on legal reform, lobbying, and defending protective legislation for workers against constitutional challenges.[22]

The NCL continued throughout the twentieth century as a broad-based consumer protection organization. It has advocated successfully for federal meat-inspection laws, workplace safety standards, unemployment compensation, and fraud protection.

The White Label Campaign 

“To live means to buy, to buy means to have power, to have power means to have responsibility.” – Florence Kelley

During the National Consumers’ League’s early years, one of its primary tools was the white label.

The white label was essentially a voluntary ethical standard. Employers whose labor practices met the NCL’s standards for fairness and safety were granted a white label. And the NCL urged consumers to support companies with white labels, while boycotting those that failed to earn the white label.

The white label was based on a “white list” established by the New York City Consumers’ League for department stores, which itself was modelled on a list published by British trade unions.[23] The white list had the advantage of avoiding legal challenges that would have accompanied a blacklist of firms to boycott.[24]

To qualify for a White Label, manufacturers had to submit to an inspection and meet these minimum conditions:

• The State factory law is obeyed,

• All the goods are made on the premises,

• Overtime is not worked, and

• Children under sixteen years of age are not employed.[25]

The white label campaign appealed to middle-class consumers through emphasis on the public health threat posed by using products made in disease-ridden tenements.[26] “The new germ theory of disease transmission lent credence to this view”, as did worker advocacy – tuberculosis was rampant in sweatshops.[27]

Although the health argument was important for winning over middle-class consumers, the white label reached beyond this to address goals that were important for workers – enforcing state factory laws, preventing subcontracting, prohibiting overtime, and ending child labour.[28]

Somewhat problematically, the white label drew on the example of a union label which was used in the late 1800s in San Francisco to discourage the purchase of cigars made by Chinese immigrants.[29] So, while the white label was primarily speaking to the middle class, it also “evoked the symbolism of white trade unions and their efforts to discourage the patronage of nonunion shops.”[30] Kelley and the NCL were trying to help sweatshop workers, most of whom were immigrants, so I think this is more incidental than a reflection on the goals of the NCL, but it does highlight the problems with racism in Progressive Era labour movements.

Because the NCL had limited capacity, the white label was applied to garments that middle-class women purchased frequently – corsets and corset substitutes, skirt and stocking supporters, wrappers, petticoats, and flannelette garments (essentially underwear).[31]

The height of the white label’s success was 1904, when the NCL had licensed 60 factories.[32] The white label’s success stemmed from three related developments:

1. A new understanding of the consumer’s economic centrality,

2. The new knowledge it generated about specific working conditions within members’ communities, and

3. Members’ ability to put their new knowledge to political use and implement legislation designed to improve working conditions in their city and state.[33]

“Undergirded by new understanding of their own economic position, by new knowledge about their communities, and by new capacity for political action, consumers supporting the White Label campaign became the vehicle whereby the National Consumers’ League emerged as the single most politically effective organization of middle-class women in the decades before World War I.”[34]

The White Label campaign improved upon previous anti-sweatshop campaigns, which were based on pity and fear. Instead, the NCL emphasized informed morality. New consumer choices, they argued, entailed a responsibility. Quote from Kelley in 1901:

“We can have cheap underwear righteously made and clean; or we can have cheap underwear degradingly made and unclean. Henceforth, we are responsible for our choice.”[35]

The consumer had a duty to recognize her direct relationship with the producer, to learn about the producer’s working conditions, and to limit her purchases to goods made under moral conditions.[36] Purchasing became a moral act.[37]

The White Label facilitated consumers in their duty by providing trustworthy knowledge obtained through its factory inspections and other investigatory techniques.

Promoting the White Label was typically the first project for new consumers’ locals. They served to create new civic spaces where women worked to expand state responsibility. Leagues forged close relationships with state factory inspectors, advanced public awareness through women’s civic groups, and lobbied for protective legislation.

Legacy of the White Label Campaign

The White Label campaign ended in 1918 in order to provide space for a union label in garment production.[38] But the NCL had already shifted focus by 1907.[39] Having garnered public power through the White Label campaign, the NCL turned to fighting for consumer and worker protection through the courts and legislatures.[40] In this sense, we can think about the White Label campaign as an “opening wedge for more general protections for American wage earners”.[41]

However, the NCL revived the White Label in the mid-1920s, when the political climate grew hostile to the prospect of labour legislation. This time, the White Label was applied to the candy industry.[42]

For the NCL, the White Label campaigns were fundamentally about publicizing the cause: the label spread messages about working conditions to a wide, middle-class audience.[43]

The NCL continues to work for the goal of promoting a fair marketplace for workers and consumers. The NCL’s current focus areas are fraud, child labor, LifeSmarts (a consumer literacy competition), and health care reform. They still do a lot of good work, but I think Florence Kelley would want the organization to be a bit more radical than they are now.

Ethical Present

Kyla decided to focus her research on how climate action has improved this year, and had trouble finding a lot of really positive stories. Below is what she talked about in the episode, but hit us up on Twitter if you have more!

She started by discussing articles from Doctors and Architects calling for action on climate change. In 2018 296k people died from heatwaves.

Jacinda Ardern and New Zealand declared a climate emergency, and committed to a carbon-neutral government by 2025.

“Ardern said the government sector will be required to buy only electric or hybrid vehicles, the fleet will be reduced over time by 20% and all 200 coal-fired boilers used in the public service’s buildings will be phased out.”

They hadn’t done much to date on climate change, so they’ll need a lot more. Especially since the government sector isn’t responsible for most of their emissions. That would be road transport and agriculture.

The Guardian reported on weather presenters in Australia including climate change in their weather forecasts, which helps the public fill knowledge gaps and normalizes the discourse. This is important because Australia is an outlier on climate action.

“When it comes to who people trust on climate change… research has found that climate scientists are highest on the list, followed by farmers and firefighters. Fourth are weather presenters.”

Kyla quoted directly from this BBC article in the episode, which looks at stretch goals for warming by the end of the century:

A new analysis, seen by the BBC, suggests the goals of the UN Paris climate agreement are getting "within reach."
The Climate Action Tracker group looked at new climate promises from China and other nations, along with the carbon plans of US President-elect Joe Biden.
These commitments would mean the rise in world temperatures could be held to 2.1C by the end of this century.
Previous estimates indicated up to 3C of heating, with disastrous impacts.
…
In September, China's President Xi Jinping told the UN that his country will reach net zero emissions by 2060, and that its emissions will peak before 2030. According to the CAT researchers, this could reduce warming by 0.2 to 0.3C by the end of the century.
Japan and South Korea have both followed suit, pledging to reach net zero by 2050. South Africa and Canada have also announced their own net zero targets.
…
"We now have north of 50% of global emissions covered by big countries with a zero emissions by mid-century goal," said Bill Hare from Climate Analytics, who helped lead the Climate Action Tracker analysis.
"When you add all that up, along with what a whole bunch of other countries are doing, then you move the temperature dial from around 2.7C to really quite close to two degrees."
"It's still a fair way off from the Paris Agreement target, but it is a really major development,"
…
"There are countries that still remain bad actors, including Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Australia, Russia, and a few others,"

Shout-out to Morocco and The Gambia, the only two countries in 2019 with a plan to reduce C02 emissions to a level consistent with limiting warming to 1.5 degrees, according to this National Geographic report card.

And shout-out to India for investing more in renewable energy than it is in fossil fuels. They have a goal to generate 40% of their power from renewables by 2030. It’s progress is so rapid they’re on track to smash that target. Their plan is compatible with a 2 degree warming scenario, and could be compatible with a 1.5 degree goal if they stopped building new coal-fired power plants.

WSJ estimated business travel will reduce by between 19%-36%. This would affect the airline industry big time because “Bank of America estimates business trips contributed $334 billion to the entire travel industry’s $1.1 trillion in revenue last year.” Some quick math – 30% reduction could cost the travel industry 10% of all revenue or 100 billion dollars.

Kyla mentioned Climate Change opinion by country, here is where she found that.

And here’s an article going into the details of how 2020 is one of the warmest years on record.

Ethical Future

We don’t make guests write notes ;)

Endnotes

[1] Westhoff, Laura. (1998). Florence Kelley’s Campaign Against Sweatshops in Chicago: Teaching Strategy. Binghamton, NY: State University of New York at Binghamton.

[2] Batlan, Felice. (2010). Florence Kelley and the Battle Against Laissez-Faire Constitutionalism. Available at: http://scholarship.kentlaw.iit.edu/fac_schol/69  

[3] Sklar, Kathryn Kish and Taylor, Jamie. (1998). How Did Florence Kelley’s Campaign against Sweatshops in Chicago in the 1890s Expand Government Responsibility for Industrial Working Conditions? Binghamton, NY: State University of New York at Binghamton.

[4] Woloch, Nancy. (2017). How Did Leaders of the National Consumers’ League and Their Lawyers Keep the Minimum Wage Alive from the Adkins Case to the Fair Labor Standards Act, 1923-1938? Alexandria, VA: Alexander Street.

[5] Sklar and Taylor, How Did Florence Kelley’s Campaign against Sweatshops in Chicago in the 1890s Expand Government Responsibility for Industrial Working Conditions?

[6] Sklar and Taylor, How Did Florence Kelley’s Campaign against Sweatshops in Chicago in the 1890s Expand Government Responsibility for Industrial Working Conditions?

[7] Sklar and Taylor, How Did Florence Kelley’s Campaign against Sweatshops in Chicago in the 1890s Expand Government Responsibility for Industrial Working Conditions?

[8] Sklar and Taylor, How Did Florence Kelley’s Campaign against Sweatshops in Chicago in the 1890s Expand Government Responsibility for Industrial Working Conditions?

[9] Sklar and Taylor, How Did Florence Kelley’s Campaign against Sweatshops in Chicago in the 1890s Expand Government Responsibility for Industrial Working Conditions?

[10] Sklar, Kathryn K. (1998). The Consumers’ White Label Campaign of the National Consumers’ League, 1898-1918. In Susan Strasser, Charles McGovern, and Matthias Judt (eds.) Getting and Spending: European and American Consumer Societies in the Twentieth Century. New York: Cambridge University Press, 17-35 at p.20.

[11] Sklar and Taylor, How Did Florence Kelley’s Campaign against Sweatshops in Chicago in the 1890s Expand Government Responsibility for Industrial Working Conditions?

[12] Sklar and Taylor, How Did Florence Kelley’s Campaign against Sweatshops in Chicago in the 1890s Expand Government Responsibility for Industrial Working Conditions?

[13] Sklar and Taylor, How Did Florence Kelley’s Campaign against Sweatshops in Chicago in the 1890s Expand Government Responsibility for Industrial Working Conditions?

[14] Sklar and Taylor, How Did Florence Kelley’s Campaign against Sweatshops in Chicago in the 1890s Expand Government Responsibility for Industrial Working Conditions?

[15] Sklar and Taylor, How Did Florence Kelley’s Campaign against Sweatshops in Chicago in the 1890s Expand Government Responsibility for Industrial Working Conditions?; Batlan, “Florence Kelley and the Battle Against Laissez-Faire Constitutionalism”. Comment that the ruling of bullshit is my own editorialization, although Batlan does call it “out of touch with reality” (2010: 7).

[16] Fee, Elizabeth and Brown, Theodore. (2005). Florence Kelley: A Factory Inspector Campaigns Against Sweatshop Labor. American Journal of Public Health 95(1): 50.

[17] Kelley, Florence. (1892). Document 1: Bureau of Statistics of Labor of Illinois [Florence Kelley], "The Sweating System of Chicago," part II in Seventh Biennial Report. Springfield, Ill.: H.K. Rokke, p. 357. Included in Kathryn Kish Sklar and Jamie Tyler. (1998). How Did Florence Kelley's Campaign against Sweatshops in Chicago in the 1890s Expand Government Responsibility for Industrial Working Conditions? Binghamton, NY: State University of New York at Binghamton.

[18] Goldmark, Josephine. (December 1949). Document 37: 50 Years--The National Consumers' League. Survey 85(12): 674-76. Included in Nancy Woloch. (2017). How Did Leaders of the National Consumers' League and Their Lawyers Keep the Minimum Wage Alive from the Adkins Case to the Fair Labor Standards Act, 1923-1938? (Alexandria, VA: Alexander Street, 2017).

[19] Goldmark, Josephine. (December 1949). Document 37: 50 Years--The National Consumers' League. Survey 85(12): 674-76. Included in Nancy Woloch. (2017). How Did Leaders of the National Consumers' League and Their Lawyers Keep the Minimum Wage Alive from the Adkins Case to the Fair Labor Standards Act, 1923-1938? (Alexandria, VA: Alexander Street, 2017).

[20] Fee and Brown, “Florence Kelley”.

[21] Sklar, “The Consumers’ White Label Campaign of the National Consumers’ League”.

[22] Batlan, “Florence Kelley and the Battle Against Laissez-Faire Constitutionalism”.

[23] Sklar, “The Consumers’ White Label Campaign of the National Consumers’ League”.

[24] Sklar, “The Consumers’ White Label Campaign of the National Consumers’ League”.

[25] Sklar, “The Consumers’ White Label Campaign of the National Consumers’ League”.

[26] Sklar, “The Consumers’ White Label Campaign of the National Consumers’ League”.

[27] Sklar, “The Consumers’ White Label Campaign of the National Consumers’ League” at p.19.

[28] Sklar, “The Consumers’ White Label Campaign of the National Consumers’ League”.

[29] Sklar, “The Consumers’ White Label Campaign of the National Consumers’ League”.

[30] Sklar, “The Consumers’ White Label Campaign of the National Consumers’ League” at p.23.

[31] Sklar, “The Consumers’ White Label Campaign of the National Consumers’ League”.

[32] Sklar, “The Consumers’ White Label Campaign of the National Consumers’ League” at p.19.

[33] Sklar, “The Consumers’ White Label Campaign of the National Consumers’ League”.

[34] Sklar, “The Consumers’ White Label Campaign of the National Consumers’ League” at p.25.

[35] Sklar, “The Consumers’ White Label Campaign of the National Consumers’ League” at p.27.

[36] Sklar, “The Consumers’ White Label Campaign of the National Consumers’ League” at p.28.

[37] Sklar, “The Consumers’ White Label Campaign of the National Consumers’ League” at p.27.

[38] Sklar, “The Consumers’ White Label Campaign of the National Consumers’ League”.

[39] Sklar, “The Consumers’ White Label Campaign of the National Consumers’ League”.

[40] Sklar, “The Consumers’ White Label Campaign of the National Consumers’ League”.

[41] Sklar, “The Consumers’ White Label Campaign of the National Consumers’ League” at p.32.

[42] Sklar, “The Consumers’ White Label Campaign of the National Consumers’ League”.

[43] Sklar, “The Consumers’ White Label Campaign of the National Consumers’ League”.

Episode 43 - Ethical Money

Ethical consumption is about bringing your values more clearly into how you spend your money. But what about the money that you’re not spending? The money that you have deposited in a savings account is actually being used all over the world to finance all kinds of economic activity. So, where you put your money – and what happens to it while it’s there – matters.

Mo’ Money Mo’ Problems: Ethical Problems in Banking and Finance

Banks and other financial institutions take money and invest it, with the hope of getting a rate of return so that they can pay interest to customers, provide dividends to shareholders, and generally make a profit. That is a role that is really important, because people and organizations need to be able to access capital in order to invest in stuff that improves productivity, which in turn should benefit everyone.

So, banks and other financial institutions provide an important service that allows capitalism to work. And I don’t mean that as a moral statement of any kind, it’s just functional: in a society where you get resources through transactional exchange, having access to finance is essential and banks facilitate transactions. But because finance carries out this essential function for effectively everything, financial institutions are potentially culpable for a range of ethical problems.

Because financial institutions manage other peoples’ money, they have a fiduciary duty to be responsible with how they use it. That generally means that financial institutions prioritize seeking a return on investment that is either as high as it can be or lower, but more stable. And whether you’re investing retirement savings or you just rely on your bank not to go under, that is important (and not inherently a bad thing).

However, some people argue that financial institutions could achieve a better balance so that ethical practices are brought into decision-making in a more central way. Financial institutions are also a step removed from most ethical harms, so they can be more difficult targets for consumer campaigns.

It would be impossible to develop a comprehensive list of all of the ethical concerns with financial institutions, just because finance touches everything. But it is useful to talk about some of the issues that are the most common targets for consumer pressure. I’ll talk about some environmental, social, and governance problems associated with the financial sector.

After that we’ll talk about what ethical finance is, some of the most common forms that it takes, and debates about ethical finance. Then we will end the episode with some tips about how you can try to bring ethics into your financial decisions. 

Environment

Banks invest in industries that are linked to environmental damage. Climate change is often the focus for activism targeting banking and the environment, but issues like conservation and pollution can feature as well. Banks have provided $2.7 trillion in financing to the fossil fuels industry since the 2015 Paris Agreement

The Rainforest Action Network produces a Fossil Fuel Finance Report, which includes a graphic where you can find information about the top fossil fuel-supporting banks.

o   JP Morgan Chase: $268.59 billion in fossil fuel financing 2016-2019

o   Wells Fargo: $197.91 billion

o   Citi: $187.67 billion

o   Bank of America: $156.92 billion

The fossil fuel divestment movement aims to address climate change by convincing financial institutions and institutional investors to divest from companies that extract fossil fuels. If you are interested in campaigning for fossil free divestment, this website has resources.

There are a number of banks and ethical funds that have committed to divesting from fossil fuels. Some ethical finance aims to promote environmentally friendly projects. One example is carbon offsets, which we discussed in a previous episode.  

Social

Social issues are those connected to the wellbeing of people. Banks have been targeted for financing companies that harm society. This includes things like investment in tobacco companies and private prisons.

Banking and Conflict

The Is Your Bank Loaded campaign grades banks based on their investment in firearms manufacturers. Notably, TD Bank received an F score from this organization.

The organization asks for banks to take a number of steps, including divesting from firearms companies until the US government adopts adequate regulations. Top companies invested $748 billion USD in the nuclear weapons industry. The Don’t Bank on the Bomb campaign reports on the financial institutions that seek to profit from companies that produce key components of nuclear weapons and nuclear weapon delivery systems. You can check out their list of who invests and who divests.

Governance

Governance issues are connected to how financial institutions themselves operate.

Tax Avoidance and Evasion

We talked about tax avoidance and evasion in our episode on tax justice. Tax avoidance and evasion is a massive public policy concern: it is unfair, increases inequality, and makes it more difficult for governments to provide good public service. Banks are some of the biggest tax avoiders and they help their clients avoid tax. Oxfam has reported on the use of tax havens by major European banks. 

Banking and Gender

Banking is an industry with a big gender gap. In the UK companies have to report on their gender pay gap. According to those reports, finance firms pay the average man 25% more than the average woman, compared with a 17% pay gap across all sectors.

What is Ethical Banking/Ethical Finance?

In 2018 there was a total of $12 trillion in US-based assets managed using sustainable, responsible and impact (SRI) investing. This was up from $8.1 trillion in 2016 and from under $1 trillion in 1995. That means that today, about 26% of professionally managed financial assets are managed using some kind of sustainable, responsible, and impact investment.

So, that means that some kind of ethical rule was used in the management of about a quarter of financial products in the US in 2018. And this is a category that is growing every year.

Social finance refers to “the allocation of capital primarily for social and environmental returns, as well as in some cases, a financial return”.[1] It is an umbrella term denoting a variety of approaches in which finance is used to advance environmental, social, or governance (ESG) objectives. It “seeks to align investments with the personal values of investors and to harness the resources and power of the financial sector to improve corporate social and environmental behavior”.[2]

But ethical finance is a big category. There are lots of different kinds of issues we might want to consider in terms of ethical content. Ethical finance usually thinks about ethics in terms of three categories: environmental, social, and governance. When you hear the acronym ESG, that’s what that means.

o   Environment: does it advance conservation, sustainability, or decarbonize?

o   Social: does it improve the rights, dignity, and living conditions of people? Does it make society better?

o   Governance: are responsible governance practices being used? How transparent, equitable, democratic, and accountable is it?

There are three broad approaches to ethical finance:[3]

o   Positive: actively investing in good things – pollution management, renewable energy, water efficiency (carbon offsets)

o   Exclusion (divestment): approaches ethical finance from a negative perspective – so rather than actively funding good projects, this would be eliminating certain investments seen as harmful (e.g., tobacco, gambling, pornography, fossil fuels, arms, private prisons)

o   Holistic: where the company managing your finance looks holistically at the ethics of companies in which they are investing your money (e.g., on human rights, taxation, inclusivity, sustainability) and may express voice once invested in that company

Divestment remains the most common kind of ethical finance strategy.[4]

Another way to frame ethical finance is in terms of approaches.[5]

o   Ethical finance: thinking about a personal moral compass;

o   Responsible investing: focused on financial value, but with certain ESG constraints;

o   Impact: thinking about the outcomes that investments are generating and implications for investor preferences

Historically, SRI has been used to confront environmental concerns, board and hiring diversity, international issues like Apartheid in South Africa and the Vietnam War, human rights, animal rights, labor rights, abortion, tobacco, and, more recently, gun violence.[6] As of 2005 Canada had approximately $55 billion USD in assets under management of SRI portfolios.[7]

Institutional investors play a big role in sustainable, responsible, and impact investment. That includes public funds, corporations, educational institutions, foundations, faith-based investors, healthcare funds, labour union pension funds, nonprofits, and family offices.

Does Ethical Finance Work? The Mission versus Returns Debate

There is some debate concerning the extent to which SRI is, and ought to be, motivated by moral concerns – in contrast to evolving understandings of risk. For instance, the carbon bubble or “unburnable carbon” hypothesis suggests that it makes good financial sense to divest from fossil fuels, irrespective of one’s moral views about environmental stewardship.[8] So, it can sometimes be difficult to identify whether ethical motives actually underlie ethical finance.

Why does that matter? Well, in one sense it doesn’t: climate change doesn’t care whether you divest from fossil fuels because you feel morally compelled to or because you’re worried about stranded assets. But in a broader sense: if all ethical investment is really financially driven, that places severe limitations on how effective ethical investment can be as a tool of social change. Because if it ultimately is about making money, then you should target other companies so that the banks see a different financial calculus when assessing investors. But if you can convince consumers and institutional investors to genuinely accept a trade-off between their rate of return in exchange for ethical values, then that is a huge possible source of change. 

How Can People (Who Don’t Have Scrooge McDuck Money) Approach Ethical Finance?

How can you, as a person that uses money, incorporate ethical practices into your financial decisions? This is a topic that deserves its own episode, but I will try to sketch out some of the basics here.

Choosing Your Bank

The first thing you can do is to find out how ethical your bank is, when it comes to ethical issues that matter to you. And you can also check out how your bank compares to others. You can do that on an issue-by-issue basis by checking out the campaigns mentioned above. Ethical Consumer has done a rating on banks. It is from a British perspective, but there are international banks on there. See where your bank stacks up compared to others in their overall rating. If your bank compares badly, it might be time to look at another financial institution.

Try asking your bank directly about their ethical practices, especially if there is one issue in particular that matters to you. Has the bank divested from fossil fuels? Does it apply any ethical criteria on its investments? Are there specific financial products you can access that do utilize ESG criteria. If you do switch banks for ethical reasons, be sure to tell them! Ethical Consumer has a template letter that you can use.

Many of the large, commercial banks rate similarly on ethical issues. So, you may want to go with a different sort of bank: a credit union.

Credit unions are financial co-operatives owned and run by their members. Credit unions are not-for-profits, so any money that is earned is invested back into the organization, distributed to members, or donated. “Credit unions provide a community-focused approach to day-to-day banking, with an emphasis on meeting customers’ needs rather than turning a profit.”

Although being a cooperative does not necessarily mean that ethical investment practices are being used, credit unions are more likely than corporate banks to incorporate ethical criteria in their decision-making. Canada has approximately 700 credit unions and people’s banks [caisses populaires]. In Canada, you can look for credit unions here.

To join a credit union, you have to buy a share in the credit union. In some cases there may be other requirements – for instance, you may need to be a resident of the province the credit union is in. Credit unions offer narrower credit product selection and their online tools are usually worse, but they typically have higher interest rates on their savings accounts, lower account fees, and better customer service. Credit unions operate democratically, so each member has one vote regardless of the size of investments or deposits. A credit union’s board of director is volunteer-run and elected by members. Commercial banks elect their board of directors through shareholders.

The Global Alliance for Banking on Values (GABV) is a network of banks that are working towards a banking sector that is more transparent and supports economic, social, and environmental sustainability. You can find GABV member banks in your country by going on the GABV website.  Three Canadian financial institutions are GABV members: Kindred Credit Union, Vancity, and la Caisse d’économie solidaire Desjardins [the Desjardins solidarity economy fund] (a partnership between private philanthropic foundations and the Desjardins solidarity economy fund).

And, of course, you can always tell your bank that you want to see them doing more on ethical finance.  

Choosing a Financial Advisor

If you have (or plan to have) a financial advisor, you can find a firm that will incorporate ethical factors.

Start by searching for “financial planner” (or “financial advisor”) and “socially responsible”, “green”, “SRI”, “ESG” or “sustainable investing”. Usually firms that do ethical investing will have this on their website. If ethical criteria are not prominent on the website, it can be a sign that ethics are not central to what the firm does.

But the reverse is not necessarily true: companies may engage in “ethics washing” by marketing themselves as socially responsible without truly incorporating ethics into their investment practices. You can consult the greenwashing guide for more information about funds using greenwash and how to spot greenwash. Or try Ethical Consumer’s guide to ethical investment funds. They also have guides on mortgages and a few other financial products.

By listening to this episode (or reading this research note) you’ve already armed yourself with some of the basics in ethical finance. But it can be worthwhile to read about it a little more – pick the elements that are most interesting to you and make sure you understand the basics. You can also try asking your current financial advisor about ESG or socially responsible index funds. Here is a list of 23 top socially conscious index funds according to Forbes.

Do Your Own Ethical Investing

You can, of course, personally invest in ethical companies by buying shares in ethical companies. But I would not advise this for a large sum of money, unless you are an expert and/or willing to put in a lot of time and effort to learn about investing.

Use Your Voice

Even if you don’t have very much money, like me, you are probably a member of at least one organization that has significant financial assets. Maybe it’s your pension fund, your local schoolboard, your university, or a faith-group you belong to. Get involved with campaigns to make your organizations more ethical investors. Universities and faith groups especially have been very active in the fossil fuel free movement.

Notes

[1] Nicholls, Alex. (2015). Social Finance: Capitalizing Social Impact. In A. Nicholls, R. Paton, and J. Emerson (eds.) Social Finance. New York: Oxford University Press.

[2] Richardson, Benjamin and Peihani, Maziar. (2015). Universal Investors and Socially Responsible Finance: A Critique of a Premature Theory. Banking and Finance Law Review 30(3): 405-455 at p.406.

[3] Money Box Podcast. (1 May 2019). Ethical Investing. BBC Radio 4.

[4] Trinks, Pieter Jan and Scholtens, Ben. (2017). The Opportunity Cost of Negative Screening in Socially Responsible Investing. Journal of Business Ethics 140: 193-208.

[5] Fintech Insider Podcast. (2 October 2020). Insights: ESG and Sustainable Investing – the Ethical Future of Finance. Fintech Insider Podcast.

[6] See, e.g.: Hoffman, A.J. (1996). A Strategic Response to Investor Activism. Sloan Management Review 37(2), 51-64; Tkac, Paula. (2006). One Proxy at a Time: Pursuing Social Change through Shareholder Proposals. Economic Review-Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta 91(3), 1-20; Vitols, “European Pension Funds and Socially Responsible Investment”; Renneboog, Luc, Ter Horst, Jenke, Zhang, Chendi. (2008). Socially Responsible Investments: Institutional Aspects, Performance, and Investor Behavior. Journal of Banking and Finance 32: 1723-1742.

[7] Renneboog, Ter Horst, and Zhang, “Socially Responsible Investments”.

[8] Lorinc, John. (19 January 2016). The Tragedy of the Horizon. Corporate Knights, http://www.corporateknights.com/channels/leadership/the-tragedy-of-the-horizon-14531832/.

Episode 42 - Tax Justice with Fariya Mohiuddin

This episode we are joined by special guest Fariya Mohiuddin to discuss tax justice. Fariya has a Masters degree in Global Affairs and is currently living in Berlin, where she works as the Senior Program Officer for the International Budget Partnership's Tax Equity Initiative. She has been working on Tax and development and tax justice issues for the last 8 years.

This is Kyla leading the charge and these are my research notes. I opened the episode with a “fun” fact from the Tax Justice Network’s website: it’s estimated at least 10% of the world’s wealth is hidden in tax havens, but it’s basically impossible to measure and TJN feels this estimate is too low.

Another fun Fact: Tax Justice Network has a podcast called Taxcast that’s 8 years old! That’s almost older than podcasting! This is something I found while doing general research and wanted to pass along to any listeners who want a deeper dive into the topic.

Then we jumped straight into the questions:

What is Tax Evasion? Tax Avoidance?

Kyla’s answer: Tax evasion is when people deliberately misrepresent their financial affairs to tax authorities in order to pay few or no taxes. This is usually a federal offense, depending on the country. This is different than tax avoidance, which is technically legal, but still supremely dodgy when performed by huge companies or the ultra-wealthy. If you’re a regular person avoiding taxes by slipping some funds into a Tax Free Savings account, that seems fine? But if you’re a billionaire not paying taxes because you’ve moved all your money into an offshore account or a shell company, that’s where things go funky? From what I understand, this is also how big companies can shuffle their money around the world and pay taxes nowhere? I’m very much a layman on this subject. Never read the Panama Papers.

 Fariya fills in the gaps:

Tax evasion – outright not paying taxes, definitely illegal

Tax avoidance – clever accounting practices that shift taxes to low tax jurisdictions, not illegal. Also known as tax planning and transfer pricing

Tax evasion and avoidance robs the world’s poorest people while the rich get even richer. Tax Justice seeks to restore the taxes to whom they are due.

Tax justice is a central concern for anyone working for social justice. We believe in genuinely progressive taxation: that is, tax systems that generate sufficient public revenue, while ensuring that this revenue is fairly redistributed and focused on re-balancing economic and other inequalities (including gender, disability, marginalized groups). Progressive taxes, progressively raised, progressively spent.

Overall, a mix of progressive taxes with high rates for high-earners, combined with low-rated consumption taxes will bring about a more progressive overall tax system.

Why is it a problem?

So why should we pay taxes? Who is hurt by hiding some money?

It’s a problem because it constitutes theft from society. Think of taxes as the subscription fee to live in a society. Fariya lives in Germany and gets premium societal services and so doesn’t mind having a relatively higher tax burden than when she lived in Canada.

But you might think, well rich people work hard. Don’t they deserve to keep their money?
Well, there’s 3 things about this:

(1)    If you’re making money because you own a business – how does that business actually work?

If you have educated workers – in the context of Canada, they’re often educated at public schools and public universities paid for by taxes.

If your workers are healthy – that’s because of a healthcare system paid for by taxes.

If your workers can get to work and your goods can be shipped/brought to market using transport and transit – that’s taxes paying for that infrastructure.

If you have intellectual property that is being protected by the courts, if you have contracts that are being protected by the law – taxes pay for the legal system.

And so, if you’re making money by benefiting from all these aspects of the system – if you avoid taxes – that’s theft. You are taking from the system and not paying back into it. And also in a real way, you’re saying “I got mine and now I’m pulling the ladder from up underneath me so that no one else can innovate or make use of opportunities in the way that I did”.

(2)    Often, the rich aren’t working hard at all. For example, in the US the top 0.1% of income earners earn 2/3rd of their income from capital and only one third from labour. That’s shares, properties, other assets like art, gold, etc – capital is VERY under-taxed compared to labour. And even if we did tax it properly, we allow people to use clever accounting tricks and practices like setting up shell companies and trusts to hold their capital – further avoiding taxation.

Put another way,  the working person is way overtaxed compared to someone rich that owns a bunch of properties or shares. Workers are subsidizing the rich and not the other way around.

(3)    Last but not least, a lot of wealth/this capital is inherited and we very rarely tax inheritances properly and allow them to be held in trusts.  

Reference: 2016 Duke of Westminster inheritance (from The Guardian)

Had the Grosvenor estate bequeathed to the new Duke of Westminster been liable for 40% inheritance tax, the amount owed to the Treasury would have been not far off the government’s entire death duty take for the last financial year.

Hugh Grosvenor, however, avoids a significant cut to his £9bn inheritance because the estate is held in a trust.

“The benefits of trusts are that they don’t form part of somebody’s estate,” says Ian Dyall, a manager at the financial adviser Towry. “In a discretionary trust, you have a whole pick list of potential beneficiaries which the trustees can choose to appoint benefits to. Because of that, you can’t point a finger to any potential beneficiary and say that’s your money. Money can stay in the trust and cascade down from generation to generation and nobody pays inheritance tax on it.”

Additional talking point: The erosion of tax bases through tax dodging impacts on the governments’ ability to fund these public services out of domestic resources, and leaves them dependent on external finance, such as development aid or loans from the IMF. The activity of multinational corporations is key to this loss of domestic revenue through abusive tax avoidance. Tax avoidance occurs when companies try to dodge taxes through complex internal structures and by finding loopholes in tax laws. Furthermore, domestic tax systems are often skewed in favour of these multinational companies, which get incentives that indigenous companies and citizens do not benefit from.

How Big is the Problem?

Depends on who you ask. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) estimates 8% of the world’s wealth is hidden in tax havens. $7.6 trillion dollars.

James Henry (TJN Senior Advisor, former Chief Economist for Mckinsey) says USD 21-32 trillion is held offshore. Gabriel Zucman – USD 8 trillion (80% undeclared to tax authorities)

Kyla tried to figure out how much money is in the world and it gave her a headache. From Market Watch:

“The amount of money that exists changes depending on how we define it. The more abstract definition of money we use, the higher the number is.”…For purists, who believe “money” refers only to physical “narrow money” (bank notes, coins, and money deposited in savings or checking accounts), the total is somewhere around $36.8 trillion. If you’re looking at “broad money,” which … (also) includes any money held in easily accessible accounts, the number is about $90.4 trillion. But for those preferring an even broader interpretation, including … cryptocurrencies, plus above-ground gold supply, and funds invested in various financial products like derivatives, the amount is in the quadrillions. (Kyla’s note. 1 Quadrillion has 15 zeros). As for money owed by every single person and country in the world, the grand total is $215 trillion.”

Is a wealth tax a solution? Fariya thinks so!

How to Support Businesses That Pay Taxes?

This is a tough one because technically tax avoidance isn’t illegal and so there are very few incentives for companies to not make use of shell companies or subsidiaries in low tax jurisdictions to shift profits and pay very little tax -  we already know Amazon, Apple, and Facebook don’t pay taxes because they have made deals with governments and/or are headquartered in Ireland specifically to negotiate low rates

Fariya’s advice is to do a bit of research: check where a company lists its legal headquarters. A lot of Canadian companies might show that legally their headquartered in the Caymans, the Bahamas, British Virgin Islands  - this is a dead giveaway that this is for low tax purposes.

Kyla mentioned the flags of convenience flown by large cruise companies as an example.
“A ship registered in the US is governed by United States maritime law, which specifies the wages that must be paid to crew, the environmental safeguards that apply to waste disposal, the certifications for ships' officers and the right of passengers to take action against the cruise operator in a US court of law, to name just a few of the strictures.
A cruise operator might decide that they would rather operate under a less strict regime, and most do.
This means they register in another country and adopt a flag of convenience, and in the cruise industry the preferred flag is that of the Bahamas. Among other advantages, the Bahamas does not impose any tax on income. Any profit the cruise line makes is untaxed, neither is there any tax on capital gain if a vessel is sold at a profit.”

If a company registered in the following countries, it’s a sign that it may be for tax reasons:

In Europe: the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Ireland

In Canada or the USA: Bahamas, Cayman Islands, British Virgin Islands

In Asia: Singapore, Macau

In Africa: Mauritius, or even Dubai

Beyond a personal measure of research, you can support politicians and platforms that are serious about tackling this issue. In Canada, the best resource is Canadians for Tax Fairness – an NGO that is fighting the good fight and keeping track of how the needle can be moved within Canada and by the Canadian government.

In the UK you can check out the Fair Tax Mark Initiative, which Celebrates companies that pay their fair share of taxes. “Operates as a not-for-profit social enterprise and believes that companies paying tax responsibly should be celebrated, and any race to the bottom resisted. To date, they have focused on certifying businesses head-quartered in the UK, but a suite of global standards will be rolled out in 2021.” eg. Lush, Co-Op grocery, Ethical Consumer.

For international listeners, check out the Global Alliance for Tax Justice website to find your own regional alliance for tax justice!

Episode 41 - Exclusion, Privilege, and Ethical Consumption

This episode we interviewed Brianna Scrimshaw Botchwey. Brianna is an aspiring zero waster and PhD candidate at the University of Toronto. Her research focuses on sustainable development and foreign aid. The research note below includes preparatory notes from Kristen and Brianna.

Kristen’s Notes

Brianna, we’re so excited to have you on the show to talk about exclusion and privilege in ethical consumption. We’re going to focus on fashion, but this is a question that impacts any kind of ethical consumption in different ways.

Brianna, I know this is something you think about a lot, and it was your idea to have an episode on this. So, can you maybe describe for the listener what you mean by privilege and exclusion in ethical consumption?

In our series on fast fashion, we talked about the components to building a conscious closet (which we took from the wonderful book by Elizabeth Cline, The Conscious Closet).

The advice is basically to avoid fast fashion as much as you can by thinking about your closet as a wardrobe that you build over time.

As part of that, there are basically three categories for how to shop for clothing as an ethical consumer: (1) when you have to go fast fashion choose Better Big Brands, which are the big brands that are doing better than their peers; (2) look for Conscious Superstars, which are slow fashion brands that really focus on human rights and sustainability; and (3) go for new-to-you second-hand clothing through thrifting, renting, swapping and borrowing. 

I think what I want to do with this episode is to talk about some of the barriers to inclusivity with each of these three approaches. But first let’s have a more general discussion about the kinds of barriers that we might encounter in all three areas:

Barriers to Building a Conscious Closet

What do you think are some of the big barriers that people face in trying to get to a more conscious wardrobe?

• Cost

• Sizing

• Marketing

• Race

• Time

Better Big Brands and Problems with Inclusive Sizing

Brianna, you shared a video about Lululemon on your Instagram feed a while ago, and I thought it was a good way to open up this discussion.

A consultancy firm called Simon-Kucher and Partners surveyed consumers about the considerations for conscious fashion. The four top-rated considerations were (1) fair labour standards, (2) sustainable materials and processes, (3) sending profits to charity, and (4) body positivity.

Have you observed a change?

I was listening to an interview with body positivity writer and photographer Marielle Elizabeth, and she talked about the reasons that clothing companies have been so slow to adopt inclusive sizing.[1] She says basically that until about five years ago the main barrier was fat-phobia and these harmful narratives that stem from it – like the (totally incorrect) idea that larger people don’t spend as much on clothing because they are trying to lose weight.[2]

But in the last five years these fat-phobic narratives are being smashed, so now it’s more about the financial investment. Because there is an initial cost to introducing inclusive sizing, especially if you’re going to be increasing beyond size 18. She made an interesting point that beyond size 18 you basically have to re-think how you design clothing because it’s not just a 1:1 size increase everywhere.[3]

I was listening to an interview with Alexandra Waldman, a co-founder of Universal Standard (an inclusive fashion brand that produces sizes 0 to 40), and she talked about not being able to find a quality white t-shirt that didn’t have a cat or flowers on it.

Sustainable Fashion Superstars Inclusive Sizing

Inclusive sizing actually just makes a lot of business sense. The sizes most frequently sold in stores are 14-18, so having those sizes available allows you to sell to people in that category.

From what I’ve seen, sizing inclusivity generally means having sizes to at least 24. A number of slow fashion brands have introduced inclusive sizing (or had it to begin with). Similarly, inclusive fashion brands are increasing their sustainability. From what I was able to see, most slow fashion brands have made nods to sustainability and also use some level of inclusive sizing. 

Power of My People: an ethical fashion company based out of B.C. They are a slow fashion company and I found their approach convincing – they seem to have thought about workers’ rights and environmental sustainability in how they supply and manufacture garments. On their website they describe where the fabrics were sourced and where manufacturing occurred for each item, as well as any ethical certifications. They have a new net zero emissions target that they are meeting with carbon offsets. For that reason, their products are on the pricier side. But I’m working on trying to buy a smaller number of staple items to build my wardrobe – conscious closet episode – so I don’t mind. I bought a linen button down from them a while back and really enjoy it. Power of My People sizes to 3XL and they have plus-sized models showing their items.

Girlfriend Collective: I have three pairs of leggings and two sports bras from this brand. I bought them in 2018 and 2019 and they are all still going strong after probably 50-150 wears. They have a Good On You rating of “Great”, which is based on a 4/5 rating for the environment and a 5/5 rating for human rights. They have a lot of detail on their website about how they source the water bottles and fish nets they recycle for the fabric, as well as the working conditions for the people that make their clothes. Girlfriend Collective uses diverse models and has sizing up to 6XL. As for price, they are certainly not cheap – leggings go for $68 each according to my most recent search – but they are in line with other athleticwear brands.

On her website, Marielle Elizabeth publishes a list of slow fashion brands that have inclusive sizing. Check it out here.

Thrift Shopping

Brianna, you mentioned thrift shops and clothing subscriptions in the outline that you sent us. Can you tell me a bit more about what you meant?

That was something I had never thought about before. But quality consignment stores so rarely have good selection for people above a size large. Which is ridiculous because all body types have clothing that they want to get rid of.

Why do you think it is that thrift shops have such little selection in plus sizes?

There are a couple of thoughts on why the supply of plus-sized clothing in second-hand markets is so low. First, because fashion brands haven’t been selling in inclusive sizes, people with larger bodies haven’t had the same level of access to the quality pieces that consignment stores look for. There is also some fat-phobia in what consignment stores are selecting for their inventories.

Another factor is the documented impact of fatphobia on the livelihoods of people. There is evidence showing that larger women make less money, which in turn influences the amount that people have to spend on clothing – which in turn means fewer clothing donations and more demand for second-hand clothes.

When it comes to thrift shops, one writer that I encountered said the lack of plus-sized options was due to high demand – that whenever there are plus-sized clothes they go pretty quickly. She also said that there is a problem where non plus-sized people will go to thrift shops and buy plus-sized clothes with interesting patterns in order to cut them up and create new items. Apparently this is a whole thing that people do, and even blog about. So yeah, don’t be that person. There is also a trend of buying oversized clothing, which takes away from nice clothes that would fit a larger body.

It seems like there is some progress on this as entrepreneurs start to create body positive consignment and resale stores. I found a list of options in several American cities. ThredUp, the world’s largest online consignment and thrift shop, has up to 4XL on its website 

On its face, clothing swaps could be great for people who don’t see their bodies represented in thrift shops. But I think about the clothing swaps I have been a part of and how my own insecurities have sort of been at play, and I wonder whether that might not be problematic. What do you think? Is there a way around it?

Ethical Fashion and Affordability

I think class is the next most important barrier to participation in ethical fashion. I know it has been a factor for me. What about for the two of you?

Let’s dig into the reasons. So, obviously, on a one-to-one basis a shirt you buy from fast fashion is going to be cheaper than slow fashion. Lots of blogs have pointed this out. Definitely, there are ways to spend less on slow fashion than on fast fashion. Good quality clothes last longer, so to a certain extent it can make sense to buy for longer.

But the reality is it can be hard to have the liquidity to be able to afford these more expensive, long-lasting pieces.

I think there is also a question of what happens if your style or size changes. Investing a lot in a few pieces can be a good strategy, but if your size fluctuates that can make it more difficult to think about your clothes as a wardrobe. Also, lifestyle changes.

There is also a certain privilege in being able to spend the time to read about what goes into a wardrobe, to research ethical fashion brands, and to go to lots of different consignment shops. Making your own clothes is also about the luxury of time.

Potential Solutions

Size Inclusivity: Brianna, you had some really good suggestions for solutions to size inclusivity problems in the fashion industry. Mind telling us about that?

In General: For ethical consumers, I think it’s important to remember that everyone has different identities and experiences and challenges, and that the ability to make ethical consumption choices is a privilege that not everybody has the same access to. What comes with that is a duty to use your privilege to make ethical consumption easier to access. So that means asking your favourite sustainable brands to size inclusively, to produce makeup in different shades. It also means you have to help push for those more systemic solutions.

Brianna’s Notes

Aim

When people engage with ethical consumption, they often don’t realize the different kinds of privilege they may have access to. Hoping to illuminate how privilege shapes who has access to ethical consumption.

Disclaimer

Not an activist or social justice scholar, my comments are based more on my personal experience when trying to engage in ethical consumption patterns. Also acknowledging that I am on the border of straight sizing so generally can find clothes in most stores and I am a lighter skinned dark person so also can find shades in most places.

Big Questions

1. Who actually has access to ethical consumption?

2. What are the different barriers to access?

Barriers to Buying Slow/Sustainable Fashion

Cost.

Sizing: most brands only go up to size 12, or occasionally 16. Even for brands that have these bigger sizes, finding them in store is like finding vegan food in a steakhouse – Not easy.

Style: a lot of sustainable plus size clothing just isn’t trendy – like not all of us bigger folks want to wear moomoos.

Marketing: a lot of sustainable fashion appears to be marketed to white western audiences, which for me suggests that a lot of assumptions are being made about who wants sustainable fashion which obviously is not just that white western audience.

Some nice exceptions:

• Girlfriend Collective goes up to a 6XL and they use diverse models.

• Nettle’s Tale goes up to 3XL and has a community sizing guide that includes measurements from people with all body types.

• Kotn goes up to a 2XL, but not in all styles.

• Other popular brands like Patagonia also only go up to 2XL in select styles.

Barriers to Other Alternatives to Fast Fashion

Thrifting (also suffers from sizing/access issues)

Clothing subscription (again only for smaller people)

Make your own (lack of time (time is also a privilege) and upfront costs can be high)  

Barriers to Buying “Sustainable” Beauty Products

Cost.

Lack of shade range.

Lack of products for different hair types.

Only sold online a lot of the time.

Examples of people trying to do better: Range Beauty is a black owned company trying to offer clean beauty for all shades. Cheekbone beauty is an indigenous owned company.  

Potential Solutions

Plus-size-only second-hand shopping.

Made to order sizing: some sustainable brands have this option where you can submit your measurements (examples: Pamut Apparel US).

Pressuring brands to be inclusive: Whenever a brand does a survey ALWAYS encourage them to increase sizing/inclusivity in product/marketing. When you are writing a review also consider talking about inclusivity.

What is NOT a solution is telling people who face these barriers that they just shouldn’t consume. It’s one thing to decide not to consume at all (which can be a valid choice) but it’s another thing not to have the choice at all because of structural factors beyond your control.

The onus for sustainable consumption is partially on the individual, but brands and suppliers also need to make sure they are inclusive so that everyone can have access to ethical consumption.

Resources

 https://www.stephanieyeboah.com/2020/03/navigating-sustainability-when-youre-plus-size.html 

https://fashionjournal.com.au/fashion/the-sustainable-fashion-industry-is-size-exclusive-take-it-from-this-model/

https://www.harpersbazaar.com/fashion/designers/a32213676/plus-size-sustainable-fashion/

https://wellinsiders.com/defining-diversity-inclusivity-in-green-beauty/

Endnotes

[1] Medium Well Podcast. (23 September 2020). Creative a More Size-Inclusive Ethical Fashion Landscape and Fat Activism with Marielle Elizabeth. Medium Well Podcast.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

Episode 40 - Halloween

The average American spent $86 on Halloween in 2019, amounting to a total of $8.8 billion. And Canadians spend more (per capita) on Halloween than Americans. Spending on Halloween is comprised of three major components: costumes ($3.2 billion), candy ($2.6 billion), and decorations ($2.7 billion).

One of the big concerns with Halloween is waste, especially plastic waste. In the UK, for example, an estimated 2,000 tonnes of plastic waste (the equivalent of 83 million bottles) are be generated from Halloween costumes each year.

Costumes

This year Halloween parties are not allowed in most places due to COVID-19, so we decided not to focus too much on costumes. Next year we’ll cover them more comprehensively.

Costumes and Cultural Appropriation

You shouldn’t dress up as a marginalized culture that isn’t your own. Doing so presents other cultures as exotic or as a costume. And it can also further harmful stereotypes. Need examples? Here is a list of ten Halloween costumes you shouldn’t wear.

When you’re looking for an inclusive Halloween costume, York University’s Centre for Human Rights, Equity and Inclusion suggests asking five questions:

1. Is my costume depicting and perpetuating a stereotype or stigma associated with a particular race, culture or religion? 

2. Does my costume include a replication of a garment that is a significant component of a particular religion or culture of which I do not identify? 

3. Is my costume depicting an historical time-period where that look/costume is now considered offensive or discriminatory?

4. Does my costume represent elements of a culture or cultural practice that is being commoditized for consumption?

5. Can I look in the mirror and confidently say that my costume choice would not be considered offensive to a particular race, ethnic origin, gender, or religion?

Ethical Costumes

Try to avoid buying a fast fashion costume, especially if you only plan to wear it once or twice. As we discussed in our clothing series, there are huge human rights and environmental problems with fast fashion.

Costume rentals can be a good option if you need a look for a one-off event. Renting a costume is a good way to get affordable short-term access to a show-stopping costume. There are costume rental services in most cities. But here are a few options for Canadians: Torontonians can try costumerentals.ca or Theatrix Costume House. Calgarians can try the rentals at Costume Shoppe or the Tickle Trunk. Vancouverites, check out the Costume Bank or WATTS Costumes. People in Ottawa can try Malabar. And for Edmontonians there is the Theatre Garage.

You can always try thrifting a costume! Most thrift shops bring in costumes around the Halloween season, so there are lots of options. Some thrift shops will also sell new costumes and props, so just be sure that you are buying used.

Borrowing can also be a good approach. If one of your friends is Halloween obsessed, they probably have costumes and props from previous years that they would be happy to lend.

In normal years costume swaps are another option, so check your local community organizations for these kinds of events.

Another option is to build a costume around items that you already own. I have a lot of grey in my wardrobe, so last year I went as a rhinoceros. I made rhino ears using felt and a headband I had, but if you are looking for something cooler you can also buy printable origami mask templates (see here). This year I’m going as Velma from Scooby Doo, mostly because I had all of the core components in my closet (more or less). 

If nothing in your closet speaks to you, another option is building a costume with new items that you will use in your daily life. For example, a friend needed a peacock costume for an event; she used the occasion to buy outrageous peacock print leggings that she still uses.

If you are making a costume, try to upcycle using items you already have. If you do need new materials, think about recyclability and try to avoid plastic where you can. Here’s an article with some good ideas for creating costumes through upcycling. Going as a bag of groceries is a particularly inspired idea, I think.

Why not go as the Mike Pence fly? All you need to do is wear black and don a pair of wings. This how-to article on making fairy wings offers some good strategies that you could easily adapt for fly wings. 

When thinking about costumes and sustainability, remember to think about makeup too! (For example, go for biodegradable glitter.)

Candy

If you took all the candy that’s sold during Halloween week and turned it into a giant ball, it’d be as large as six Titanics and weigh 300,000 tonnes.

There’s a long list of problems with Halloween candy:

Transportation costs to have ingredients and finished products shipped all over the world

Litter from non-recyclable and non-compostable plastic packaging. You could give out baked goods or homemade treats to your friends and family, but trick-or-treaters will usually throw those away, especially during COVID I imagine. So trying to go zero waste would likely result in food waste.
Another option is to use TerraCycle, you can order a snack wrappers zero waste box, fill it with candy wrappers, and send it back for recycling. Yes, they start at $86, but as Kristen suggested in our episode, you can go in as a community or school, if the price is out of reach!
Ultimately, if you’re looking for plastic free packaging, there are options that come in cardboard containers. Some municipalities won’t recycle these because they’re too small, but they can always be composted. Junior Mints, Mike and Ikes (which are vegan, if you don’t mind eating a resin scraped off a tree that’s the product of beetles, who aren’t necessarily harmed in the process. The dye has likely been tested on animals though), Nerds (vegan except for colours being tested on animals, a colour made from the scales of insects, and refined sugar is often filtered using bone char from the meat industry holy shit I had no idea?), Dots (vegan), Milk Duds, Smarties, and Raisins (Kristen’s least favourite).
Side note: aluminium foil is recyclable and I’m the worst for not knowing that. The bigger the aluminium ball, the more likely to be recycled.

Food Waste. Left with too much candy for one kid (or adult) to possibly eat? Treats for Troops might be an option in your area. Candy is given to soldiers and veterans.

Carbon footprint of milk production. We’ve discussed this before!

Deforestation tied to cocoa.

Deforestation tied to palm oil.

Forced labour. Most Halloween candy sales are for chocolate, and most chocolate sales in a year happen at Halloween. We’re probably going to do a whole episode on chocolate, so I won’t get into it too much here, but the gist is the cocoa industry is real bad for forced labour. As is the sugar industry (we did an episode on that). This is especially prevalent in Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana, where the majority of cocoa farms are now located. During the 2013-14 growing season, an estimated 2 million children were used for hazardous labour throughout Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire.

“In June of 2001 the US House of Representatives voted to consider a labeling system to assure consumers that slave labor was not used in the production of their chocolate. The US chocolate industry responded with an intense lobbying effort to ward off legislation that would require “slave free” labels on their products.” - Slave Free Chocolate

A lot of companies, including Nestle and Mondelez (Sour Patch Kids, Oreo, Ritz, Toblerone, Wheat Thins, Maynards, Cadbury, Chips Ahoy) have promised to become more sustainable or fully sustainable in relation to their cocoa, but so far no one actually has from what I found.

Unreal sells vegan and fair trade chocolate. Here’s a list of a few more options!

Want to opt out of candy altogether this year?

Trick or Treat for UNICEF!
Give out packages of seeds instead of candy. This could be fun for kids, that’s a craft with payoff.
Give out a can of sugary fair-trade drink.
Lots of blogs recommending pencils/erasers, but who wants to be that guy? (Kristen apparently loves this).

Final note: Kristen mentioned the red dye scandal Starbucks dealt with a few years ago, here’s more information for the curious.

Decorations

Halloween is the second biggest decorating holiday (after Christmas).

Decorations and Human Rights

There isn’t a lot out there on the labour conditions of Halloween decorations producers, but it seems likely that conditions aren’t very good.

In 2018, a woman in the US found an SOS message in a polystyrene graveyard kit that had been made in a Chinese labour camp for dissidents. It said: “If you occasionally buy this product, please kindly send this letter to the World Human Right Organization. Thousands people here who are under the persecution of the Chinese Communist Party Government will thank and remember you forever.”

Tips for Ethical Halloween Decorations

In general, try to avoid single-use decorations. If you must, go for recyclable paper decorations. There are lots of good DIY paper decoration ideas out there. Check out these links for paper skeletons, cardboard tombstones, ghost garland made from shredded paper, and paper spiderweb garland. Not every option in this Country Living decoration guide is sustainable, but I really like the horror novel door idea!

You can also upcycle materials for decorations. Try this tutorial for turning tin cans into jack-o-lantern decorations. Or use empty jars to make this spooky apothecary décor. You can also repurpose egg cartons as bats. 

If you are able to store decorations for multi-year use, that is a great option! As with costumes, start with upcycling and second-hand. If you are buying new, try to find fair trade if you can. And look for items that are durable and can be reused for years.

If you have kids, reusing trick or treat baskets is a good way to reduce your environmental footprint. Or you can just do what my parents did and give your kid an old pillowcase.

Not everyone has the space to store decorations. If you are space-constrained but still want to decorate, you can do that sustainably by using natural objects like gourds, corn husks. Then simply eat or compost them at the end of the season.

Pumpkins

We need to talk specifically about pumpkins, because they are a huge component of Halloween decorations. 99% of pumpkins sold in the UK are used for making jack-o-lanterns.

Try to go for local pumpkins if you can.

Food waste is a huge contributor to climate change, so don’t just trash the pumpkin. At a minimum, remember to compost your pumpkin. You can also make the most of your pumpkin by using all parts of it.

Toast the seeds and use the innards to make pumpkin purée. Here is a guide on how to toast pumpkin seeds.

You can also make pumpkin purée from the flesh of the pumpkin. Here is a guide on how to make pumpkin purée. Once you have pumpkin purée you can use it in pumpkin pie, pumpkin spice lattés, pumpkin soup, pumpkin pizza, pumpkin pasta, and much more. I’m going to use my pumpkin purée to make this pumpkin black bean soup from Minimalist Baker.

Episode 39 - COVID-19, Wildfires, and the Climate Crisis

In this episode we were joined by past guest Robert Miller to discuss the west coast wildfires and the climate crisis. Below are Kristen’s notes for the episode, and some of the questions we asked Robbie throughout.

West Coast Wildfires

Right now, there are 1,576 active wildfires burning across the western US. There have been 43,785 wildfires in the US this year, which have burned 7 million acres this year. This is over one million more acres burned than the 10-year average. As of September 23, there were more than 30,000 firefighters and support personnel assigned to wildfires.

California has been the worst off. The first, third, and fourth largest fires in California’s history all happened in 2020. There have been at least 26 fatalities from the fires and 7,196 structures have been damaged or destroyed.

But the wildfires haven’t occurred only in California. They have also burned throughout Washington, Oregon, Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico. At one point, ten percent of Oregon’s population was under an evacuation alert. And pretty well the entire west coast of the US was covered by air pollution advisories over a span of a few days. Wildfire smoke even impacted the eastern part of the continent.

Wildfires do occur naturally, but climate change is extending the wildfire season and making it more intense. That is because warmer temperatures prompt earlier snowmelts and higher temperatures, which result in drier soil and vegetation that is more prone to wildfires for longer periods of time. Also, climate change makes forests more prone to beetle infestations, which in turn makes them more likely to burn.  Leaders at CalFire have even suggested that they no longer have a wildfire season, since California now deals with wildfires year-round.

From 2000 to 2018, wildfires burned more than twice as much land area per year as in the period of 1985-1999. It is projected that a 1 degree temperature increase would increase the median area burned by as much as 600% in some forests. (80% of wildfires are started by people.)

The Metronome building in New York has a digital clock that usually counts down the hours, minutes, and seconds until midnight. Instead, it is currently counting down the time until Earth runs out of its carbon budget. The installation was designed by two artists (Gan Golan and Andrew Boyd). We have 7 years (and 98 days on 24 September) to limit climate change to 1.5 degrees.

The Climate Movement in 2020

The global day of climate action will have just happened when we release this episode, so we thought this would be a good opportunity to reflect on where the climate movement is at and where it needs to go in 2020 and beyond.

Last year, it felt like a moment for climate activism. The global climate strike drew large crowds in countries around the world, climate change leapt to the top of political agendas, and climate groups like Fridays for Future, Extinction Rebellion, and the Sunrise Movement all had a lot of momentum. When I look at 2020, it really doesn’t seem like there is that same momentum.

There are still 3,133 strikes planned around the world for 25 September 2020. But that’s a lot less than the 5,668 in September 2019.

What are some of the biggest accomplishments of the climate movement to-date, in your view?

What are some of its biggest weaknesses?

Impact of the Pandemic on Climate Activism

There definitely is climate activism happening – earlier in September 300 Extinction Rebellion protesters were arrested in London at climate protests. 13 were arrested for blockading Rupert Murdoch-owned News Corp (which publishes the Sun, the Times, and the Daily Mail in the UK). That prompted a big debate over there about protests tactics and the freedom of the press.

But activism has been much more muted this year. To what extent is that a result of the pandemic, versus other things?

Do you think climate activism will be able to regain the momentum it had in 2019? How?

Racial Justice and Climate Activism’s Whiteness Problem

Can you tell me a bit about the links between climate change and racial justice?

Climate change is a racial justice problem, so in theory climate activism and racial justice activism should go hand-in hand. But in practice, not always. Do you think climate activism has a whiteness problem?

A Green Recovery?

People have talked a lot about climate gains as a silver lining of the pandemic. Which is kind of gross from the point of view of respecting human life and suffering. But it’s also overblown: even with stay at home orders, we are on track to emit 92% as much carbon as last year.  

One major question is whether governments will prioritize a green and just pandemic recovery, or if austerity will win the day.  

Bill Gates had a really depressing fact in a recent article:

“As of last week [article came out August 4, 2020], more than 600,000 people are known to have died from COVID-19 worldwide. On an annualized basis, that is a death rate of 14 per 100,000 people. How does that compare with climate change? Within the next 40 years, increases in global temperatures are projected to raise global mortality rates by the same amount – 14 deaths per 100,000. By the end of the century, if emissions growth stays high, climate change could be responsible for 73 extra deaths per 100,000 people. In a lower emissions scenario, the death rate drops to 10 per 100,000. In other words, by 2060, climate change could be just as deadly as COVID-19, and by 2100 it could be five times as deadly.”

Worldwide, 71% of people agree that climate change is as serious a crisis as COVID-19. Canada and the US had some of the lower figures for this, but still over half agreed.

One possible sign of hope for a green recovery is the sudden prevalence of “build back better” in documents on pandemic recovery. The UN and OECD have used this language, as has the Joe Biden campaign, the Government of the United Kingdom, and the Government of Canada.

Canada’s Throne Speech and Climate Change 

In Canada, the government released its Throne Speech on Wednesday 23 September. The Throne Speech sets out government’s priorities and it was seen as the document articulating how Canada will handle pandemic recovery.

The government pledged that “Climate action will be a cornerstone of our plan to support and create a million jobs across the country.”

Key initiatives:

• The Government of Canada committed to legislating a goal of net-zero emissions by 2050. Which, notably, is the commitment that the Green Party campaigned on in 2019.

• The Government also said that it would invest in retrofitting homes and buildings; disaster resilient infrastructure; public transit; zero-emissions vehicles; zero-emissions technology companies; and urban parks.

• The government also pledged to plant 2 billion trees and reaffirmed its commitment to ban single-use plastics.

• But it also said that it would “support” several polluting sectors, including oil and gas, during the transition. 

What did you think about the government’s commitments on climate change in the throne speech, Robbie?

Given that Canada has missed its Paris Accord targets so far, do you think the net-zero commitment matters on its own? Or will it all come down to the quality of the measures that they introduce in the budget?

Final notes:
Robbie mentioned a photo of wildfire smoke meeting hurricane Paulette, here it is!
Are we running out of names for our tropical storms? Yup! This is the second time (ever) we’ve had to move to the Greek alphabet because we ran out of letters.

Check out our other episodes on COVID-19:
Kristen and Kyla React to COVID-19
COVID-19 and Inequality with Alix Jansen
Ten Unexpected Effects of COVID-19
Art, Artists, and COVID-19

Episode 38 - Tea

What is tea?

With the exception of water, tea is the most consumed drink in the world. Tea is a beverage that is produced by steeping the young leaves and leaf buds of the tea plant, Camellia sinensis, in hot water. I read this description of tea: “[tea] has a slightly cooling, astringent flavor.”

Each year 5.8 million metric tons of tea are produced.

Tea is a woody perennial crop with a lifespan exceeding 100 years. There are some tea plants that are over 1,500 years old in the Yunnan province of southwestern China. Tea grows for two years, and then generally can be harvested at 7-10 day intervals for up to 60 years. Tea plants can grow very tall, but they are typically maintained as shrubs through pruning.

Types of tea 

There are two main varieties of the tea plant: the small-leaved China plant (C. sinensis sinensis) and the large-leaved Assam plant (C. sinensis assamica).

There are six main types of tea: white, yellow, green, ooling, black, and puerh. Each tea type has its own processing methods and brewing times, but a core difference is the extent to which the leaves are fermented.

Technically herbal blends and fruit infusions are not teas, but rather tisanes.

Where is it grown?

The tea plant grows naturally throughout much of Asia, but it can be (and is) grown elsewhere. Tea is grown in more than 45 countries, but the biggest producers are China and India and the biggest exporters are Sri Lanka and Kenya.

India is the second largest tea producer, with more than 1,692 tea manufacturers and approximately 3.5 million tea workers. The tea industry is India’s largest private sector employer. Assam and Darjeeling are the two most well-known teas produced in India. 70% of India’s tea is produced in Assam and West Bengal.

Almost 5% of the population of Sri Lanka works in the tea industry, either on plantations or in tea processing.

A very brief history of tea

Tea has been used since about 2700 B.C.E.

It was first used in China for medicinal purposes. Tea was also a status good and currency in China, used to pay tribute to Chinese emperors. Tea plantations were established by the British East India Company during British colonial rule, which emphasizes “the consistent and resilient role of forced and exploited labour on tea plantations throughout the historical development of the industry”.

The tea production process

First, obviously, you have to grow and harvest the tea. This article has a lot of detail on tea cultivation. Tea is picked and gathered in tarpaulin bags. Pickers pick what is called the “flush” (a grouping of two young leaves and a bud). Pickers often have weight-based quotas on which worker pay is dependent.

Then tea is processed in a series of complex and varied steps. Withering is the first step. Dry air is blown on the leaves to extract moisture. Sometimes leaves are withered in the sun before undergoing indoor withering. Then, a rolling machine twists the withered leaves. This phase can also be called disruption.

Some teas are fermented, while others are not – and this is the main difference between different kinds of tea. Fermentation is where tea is allowed to undergo enzymatic oxidation before it is dried. That process can be stopped by roasting or steaming the leaves. The longer tea is fermented, the darker the colour of the leaves. White teas, as well as some green teas, are either non-fermented or only lightly fermented. Semi-fermented tea leaves have a slight yellow to brown colour. Jasmine and oolong teas are semi-fermented. Black teas are fully fermented. Fermentation time depends on temperature. 

After leaves have sufficiently fermented, they are placed in a tumbling gas-heated dryer, in a process called fixation. Fixation stops fermentation. Next, tea is formed into small pellets by bagging it in cotton and placing the bag in a rolling press. Forming the pellets intensifies the flavour of the tea. Then tea is dried in an oven, where it undergoes three drying cycles of 100 degrees Celsius for 20 minutes each. The aim is to reduce the moisture content to under 5%. Firing also brings out the fragrance of the tea. Next, tea is sorted according to particle size using sieves in a process called grading.

Tea is “exported after primary processing (drying and bulk packaging)”, with blending, final packaging and marketing taking place primarily in buyer countries. These are the most lucrative stages of the process. 86% of the value added happens at the last two stages (tea blending and retailing); only 7% of value added is captured in the producing country.

In the episode, Kristen mentions listening to a cool episode of Stuff You Should Know on how Matcha is made, listen for yourself here!

The tea industry

Tea buying is a highly concentrated industry of a few large companies. Four companies dominate: Unilever (produces Lipton and PG Tips); Tata Tea (produces Tetley); Van Rees (a tea trading company); and James Finlay (a tea packing company). Lack of transparency in the global tea supply chain makes it difficult to trace the origin of blended tea that is sold in western markets. One of the major tea producers is McLeod Russel, which has numerous tea plantations in India, Vietnam, and Uganda.

Tea and the environment

The biggest environmental impact from drinking tea comes from adding milk to it. Drinking tea black can use as little as 21 grams of CO2. But milk will typically account for around two-thirds of the carbon footprint as tea.

A cup of tea has a virtual water footprint of 30 litres of water. That is significantly smaller than the virtual water footprint for coffee (130 litres per cup). Again, though, adding milk is the bulk of the water footprint of a cup of tea. Milk’s virtual water footprint is 255 litres per cup. So if we assume that you add maybe a ¼ cup of milk into a mug of tea, that means the total water footprint of that mug of tea is 94 litres.

Land use

As with other agricultural crops, tea production creates environmental problems through land conversion. Through land conversion for plantations, tea contributes to deforestation, erosion, and river pollution. For example, in North East India a combination of forest and grassland conversion has threatened tiger and rhinoceros habitats.

Tea and human rights

75-85% of tea pickers are women. The biggest ethical concern with tea production is the treatment of workers at tea plantations. In South Asia, these rights violations have their roots in colonialism.

Harvesting tea is labour-intensive, which creates incentives for producers to push down labour costs to increase profit. Even though “global prices for tea are at historically high levels, in real terms […] the prices paid to producers are barely level with, or are even below, where they were 30 years ago.”  

Wages and working conditions 

Tea harvesters make very low wages, often at their country’s minimum wage and below the poverty line. In Sri Lanka, 30% of workers on tea plantations live below the poverty line despite being employed. In India, tea plantation workers can be paid as little as $1-1.5 per day and expected to harvest 20 kilograms of tea or more daily.  

There is also evidence of union busting activity on tea plantations. And pesticide use on tea plantations poses health risks, as workers are often not provided adequate protective equipment. 

Working conditions on tea plantations are, as you can imagine, not great. There has been evidence of violence and abuse, debt bondage, the under-provision of legally mandated goods and services like housing and sanitation, and wage theft. 

Living conditions on tea plantations

Workers are often housed in crowded, barrack-style accommodation. They may have inadequate access to medical care. In the Sri Lankan context, housing was often built by the British during the 1920s (when 20,000 rooms were built for tea-pickers) and have changed little since. Many of these buildings only have electricity or running water for a few hours per day, if at all.

There is very little privacy in these conditions, and workers are at a higher risk of sexual harassment and violence. “A survey conducted on a Sri Lankan plantation discovered that this lack of privacy has led women to commit suicide.” “Alcohol abuse is high among males on plantations and drunken violence against women is common, according to UNICEF.”

In India, at least, these poor living conditions are directly linked to colonialism. The British introduced tea cultivation. Colonial plantations relocated women as indentured laborers in what the British called “tea gardens”. India’s post-independence government sought to address the poor conditions of tea workers, but laws like the Plantation Labour Act 1951 entrenched the colonial plantation system. The Act made plantation owners responsible for providing education, healthcare, sanitation, and employment for workers. This has made workers vulnerable to human rights violations.

And because these houses are often the longstanding family home of tea plantation families, many of these families have more than one family member working on the plantation to ensure that their lodging and employment is secure.

Child and forced labour on tea plantations

Child labour is, unfortunately, not uncommon on tea plantations. Forced labour also occurs in tea production. Notably, in China some tea plantations use penal labour through the laogai system (laogai means reform through labour). 

And the poverty wages on tea plantations can put family at risk of child and forced labour off-plantation. Families often cannot support themselves and their children, which makes their children vulnerable to traffickers. It is not uncommon for girls especially to be trafficked into domestic slavery, where they may suffer physical and sexual abuse. The low wages on tea plantations are connected to forced labour, because they can force families to rely on money lenders and thus enter into situations of debt bondage.

What can you do about it?

Tea plantations can be certified under a number of ethical certification schemes, including Fairtrade; Rainforest Alliance, Ethical Trade Partnership, and Trustea. However, certification does not always guarantee good labour standards. The Global Business of Forced Labour study found that in India in 2018 there was little difference between certified and non-certified plantations on wage levels and other labour standards.

Hired workers on tea plantations in India and Indonesia, at least, are paid the same poverty rate whether they are certified or not: this is because standards only require that wages should not fall below the legal minimum. Therefore, certification is not a guarantee that workers’ wages are living wages.

However, Fairtrade certification does improve wages on smallholder farms. Ethical certification does also help workers on a number of other fronts, such as overtime pay, written contracts, and the investments in healthcare, education, or facility improvements that are made via Fairtrade premiums.

Ethical Tea Partnership

The Ethical Tea Partnership was formed in 1997 by a number of large tea companies, for the purpose of working to monitor and assure tea supply chains. ETP standard is usually seen as less stringent and easier to obtain than Fairtrade tea certification.

Ethical Consumer Brand Ratings

Ethical Consumer’s tea ratings give some sense of the brands with the best ethical commitments, although this rating is very UK-centric. There were slight differences in the ratings of the three big brands, including within the different teas under the same brand name. But all three scored near the bottom of the rating as a result of a report on workers’ rights that addresses tea plantations servicing all of the big brands. The top performers were all Fairtrade, Organic, or both.

Episodes 36 and 37 - Forced Labour

For Labour Day, we wanted to highlight the conditon of workers who aren’t protected by modern labour laws and labour unions. Given its prevalence throughout the world, we chose to examine the cross-cutting theme of forced labour.

We brought back Alexandra Sundarsingh for Part One, to bring historical context. Lex is a second year PhD student in the department of history at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She has a BA and MA from the University of Toronto. Thematically, her research interests include the history of Indian indenture, and its intersections with labor, race, gender, diasporic Indian culture, colonialism, and empire. Geographically, she focuses on how South Asia and the Indian Ocean world connect to broader global histories of migration, labor, and culture. She approaches these topics mainly through legal documentation and debates, transportation and labor infrastructure, and print culture in the Indian Ocean British colonies between 1840 and 1920. She also has an ongoing love of and interest in food history and hopes to be able to use this in her research as well. Check out her work here!
Lex recommended another book for this episode: We, the Survivors by Tash Aw

 Excerpt from Amnesty International’s “Turning People into Profits” (p.7):

When Suresh, aged 39, first considered leaving his village in Saptari district for a foreign job, he hoped it might be a life-changing experience that would set him and his family up for a more secure financial future. His first step was to contact an agent in his village who knew about job opportunities abroad. The agent had good news. He could offer him work in a Malaysian glove making factory. Pay would be relatively high, at RM 1800 (USD 420) per month, and conditions would be good, with one day off every week, safe working conditions and clean accommodation. Ultimately, the agent said, this would give Suresh the chance to save enough money to buy land for his family.

But this chance would cost: Suresh had to pay the village agent, as well as the Kathmandu recruitment agency who would finalise the deal, upfront. To get his job, Suresh borrowed NPR 250,000 (USD 2,416) from a local moneylender, at an annual interest rate of 36%. Although the recruitment fee was enormous (and illegal), Suresh’s agent and the Kathmandu agency assured him that he would be able to quickly pay off the debt once he started earning in Malaysia. The reality was very different. At the glove making factory, Suresh was unpaid for months on end, and when he was paid, his employer made a number of unexplained deductions from his salary. Suresh could not leave and get a new job, because his passport had been taken away, and his employer refused to end his contract or even allow him to leave the factory. In desperation, Suresh turned to his recruitment agency for help. They did not return his calls.

Instead of making money, when Suresh finally returned to Nepal in 2015 he had accumulated a staggering debt of NPR 550,000 (USD 5,317).[1]

What is forced labour?

Forced labour is a form of modern slavery. It includes slavery, practices similar to slavery, and bonded labour/debt bondage. According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), forced labour is: “all work or service which is exacted from any person under the menace of any penalty and for which the said person has not offered himself voluntarily”. The ILO definition includes two core elements.

First, labour must be extracted under the menace of any penalty. The penalty can be penal sanctions or a loss of rights and privileges. In its most extreme form, the menace of a penalty can involve physical violence or restraint. But other, more subtle, forms of penalty exist as well. Sometimes that might mean denouncing victims to the police or immigration authorities. Penalties can be financial, as in the case of debt-bondage and wage theft. In other cases, people may have their documents confiscated.

Second the work must be of an involuntary nature. For this criterion, the ILO looks at things like the method and content of consent, any external constraints or indirect coercion, and whether it is possible to revoke freely given consent. It is often the case that victims enter forced labour situations initially of their own accord and discover later that they are not free to withdraw their labour. (FYI, the ILO definition excludes prison work.)

Debt bondage is a particularly prominent feature of forced labour in current-day contexts. Half of forced labour imposed by private actors included debt bondage. In agriculture, domestic work, and manufacturing, debt bondage was even more prevalent – occurring in more than 70% of cases.

Forced labour is different than sub-standard or exploitative working conditions – so, even though things like low wages or unsafe working conditions are exploitative and bad, they are not in themselves forced labour.

There are numerous international treaties on forced labour, including: ILO Forced Labour Convention, 1930 (No. 29); ILO Forced Labour Protocol (ratified, not yet in force); UN Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade, and Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery; Palermo Protocol to Prevent, Suppress, and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children.

How it works

This short video does a good job of showing how forced labour often happens.

There are two main phases of forced labour: recruitment and control and exploitation.

Forced labour usually involves some kind of unfree recruitment, involving deception or coercion. Coercive recruitment often involves debt bondage or confiscation of documents. It can also occur through abuse of a difficult financial situation, irregular migrant status, or a difficult family situation. Deceptive recruitment is where promises made at the time of recruitment are not fulfilled. Victims are most commonly deceived about wages, working conditions, the jobs themselves, or the length of stay.  

People in situations of forced labour work under exploitative conditions. This can include low salaries, delayed payments, imposed poor living conditions, excessive work, and lack of social protection. Victims of forced labour face coercion, which might include:

●      Threats or actual physical harm

●      Restriction of movement or confinement to the workplace or a limited area

●      Withholding wages or excessive wage reduction that violates previously made agreements

●      Retention of passports and identity documents

●      Threats of denunciation to the authorities, when the worker has an irregular immigration status

What is the scale of forced labour?

In total, about 40 million people around the world are in modern slavery. That is roughly the same as the population of Canada. Modern slavery includes forced labour and forced marriage. Forced labour makes up more than half of modern slavery. At any given time, an estimated 25 million people are victims of forced labour. For context, that’s roughly the same as the population of Australia. (15 million people were living in a forced marriage). Those estimates are from a study called the Global Estimates of Modern Slavery created in 2017 by the ILO, the Walk Free Foundation, and the International Organization for Migration.

And that’s at any given time. In the past five years, 89 million people experienced some form of modern slavery.

Somewhere between 83% and 90% of the world’s forced laborers are working for the private sector, according to one estimate. Forced labour generates annual profits of about $150 billion USD.

State-imposed forced labour

State-imposed forced labour is declining as a source of forced labour, but it does occur. At least 2.2 million people worldwide are trapped in state- or rebel-imposed forms of forced labour. This form of forced labour often occurs in prisons or in work imposed by rebel or armed forces.

You can think about child soldiers as an example of state- or rebel-imposed forced labour. In previous episodes we have also talked about the Uzbek government’s connection to forced labour in the cotton industry. And of course, forced labour in Chinese re-education camps for Uighurs has received a lot of attention recently.

Another example is North Korea’s overseas workers program. North Korea sends somewhere between 50,000 and 120,000 of its citizens to work overseas and the government receives the lion’s share of wages for these workers (70-90%). North Korean overseas workers are primarily in China and Russia, although they have been found in dozens of countries in Asia, Africa, South America, and Eastern Europe. They are employed mostly in mining, logging, textile, and construction.

The United Nations and others have documented conditions that amount to forced labour. For instance: workers do not know the details of their employment contract; they receive tasks according to their state-assigned social class; they are under constant surveillance while working abroad; and they are threatened with repatriation if they commit infractions. It is believed that the North Korean regime makes $1.2 to 2.3 billion annually from its overseas worker program.

In the second episode, Kyla talks about the Chinese prison system and Christmas Light production. It’s pretty grim, but you can follow the link to read more. She also mentions the stories that have come out in the past few years of consumers finding notes in their merchandise from people experiencing forced labour, and you can read more about that here.

Where is forced labour a problem?

Modern slavery occurs everywhere, although forced labour is most prevalent in Asia and the Pacific, where 4 out of every 1,000 people were victims. Europe and Central Asia was the region with the second highest prevalence of forced labour (3.6 per 1,000), followed by Africa (2.8 per 1,000), the Arab States (2.2 per 1,000), and the Americas (1.3 per 1,000).

Forced labour happens in a bunch of industries, especially: domestic work; construction; manufacturing; agriculture, forestry, and fishing; accommodation and food services; wholesale and trade; personal services; mining and quarrying; and begging.

Source: Global Estimates of Modern Slavery 2017, p.32

There are some regional patterns to this. In the Middle East, for instance, forced labour is most often for domestic work (270,000 out of 400,000 according to the ILO). In developed economies, forced labour is more common in other sectors like agriculture, construction, and manufacturing.

An American study created a typology of sex and labor trafficking using data from a human trafficking hotline. The typology includes 25 categories of work, many of which are related to sex. According to the US Department of Labor, the goods with the most forced labor listings (meaning number of countries listed) are: bricks, cotton, garments, cattle, and sugarcane.

Who is affected by forced labour?

More than two-thirds of modern slavery victims are women and girls (71%). It’s true that some of this is because forced labour in the commercial sex industry is overwhelmingly women and girls (99%) and because women and girls are mostly the victims of forced marriages (84%).

But even in other sectors, women and girls make up more than half (58%) of forced labour victims. There are a few sectors where males are primarily victims of forced labour: mining and quarrying; begging; construction and manufacturing; and agriculture, forestry, and fishing. On the other hand, victims are most often women in domestic work and accommodation and food services.

Victims of forced labour tend to be younger than the workforce overall. About one fifth of forced labour victims are children (18%), although state-imposed forced labour uses children less frequently (7%). 

Even though sexual exploitation is only about one-fifth of all forced labour, in terms of the number of people affected, two-thirds of profits from forced labour were generated by forced sexual exploitation. That is because sexual exploitation is the most lucrative form of forced labour, with an average annual profit per victim of $21,800 USD (compared with $4,800 in construction, $2,500 in agriculture, and $2,300 in domestic work). On the other hand, while forced labour in the agriculture, fishing, and forestry sector makes up a fairly small component of profits from forced labour, it affects quite a lot of people – approximately 3.5 million in 2014.

According to the Canadian Human Trafficking Hotline, some groups are most at-risk of forced labour. First are foreign nationals with precarious immigration status, recruitment debts, language barriers, and a lack of awareness of their rights. Second are those working in: agriculture and farming (seasonal workers, farm hands); domestic service (child/elder care and home housekeeping); hospitality (hotel housekeeping, restaurant kitchen work); construction and resource extraction (e.g., mining, timber, etc.); and services such as nail salons and commercial cleaning businesses. Third are people with vulnerabilities related to: precarious housing or homelessness, substance abuse, poverty, physical or learning disabilities, and mental health issues.

What are the causes of forced labour?

Poverty and globalization are two foundational causes of forced labour. But these are pretty broad concepts. To be a bit more specific, I want to talk about six dimensions that make people vulnerable to forced labour: restrictive migration regimes; economic vulnerability; sexism and racism; state fragility and conflict; authoritarianism; and global capitalism.

Restrictive Migration

Forced labour is closely connected to migration and, in particular, human trafficking. Almost one in every four victims of forced labour were exploited outside of their country of residence. This is especially the case for forced sexual exploitation, where three-quarters (74%) of victims were exploited outside of their country of residence. That is because there is a high degree of risk associated with migration, especially for migrant women and children.

Approximately 20% of forced labour is a result of human trafficking. Human trafficking is “the acquisition of people by improper means such as force, fraud or deception, with the aim of exploiting them.” People trafficked into forced labour are trafficked into commercial sexual exploitation (43%), economic exploitation (32%), and for mixed or undetermined reasons (25%).

Of course, it’s not just human trafficking: restrictive migration regimes can create unfreedom as well. Qatar’s successful bid to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup drew a lot of attention to the situation of migrant workers there. 95% of Qatar’s labour force consists of migrant workers, and these workers are brought in through a sponsorship system called the Kafala System. Qatar was roundly critiqued for this system, and international pressure led to changes. For instance, now workers do not require exit visas to leave the country. Although the Kafala System has been rightly criticized for how it creates the vulnerabilities that can allow for forced labour, what I found the most striking when I was reading about it is how similar it is to seasonal migrant worker programs in Canada and other wealthy countries. We mentioned COVID outbreaks among Canadian temporary workers and you can listen to more about that on this episode of Front Burner.

The ILO has a good description of how the vulnerability of migrant workers gets exploited in the construction industry in Eastern Europe, for instance:  

Migrant workers are brought illegally to work on a construction site, without knowing the working conditions or terms of payment. There, they discover that they are forced to live together in a remote place provided by the employer (to avoid police controls) and told that they will be paid only at the end of the construction. A few days before the end, when the work is done and wages are due, the owner may call a law enforcement officer to inform him of the presence of irregular migrants. The workers are then deported and the employer does not need to pay them. All due wages (minus the bribe) increase the profits made.

Economic Vulnerability

Poverty and lack of outside options are important risk factors for forced labour. In addition to poverty, people can be more vulnerable to forced labour when their family has undergone an income shock or is experiencing food insecurity.

Lower education and literacy levels can also make workers more vulnerable to forced labour. Weak labour protections create pools of unprotected workers, “who face serious barriers to acting collectively and exerting rights”. Workers can be unprotected because their country lacks robust labour protections or because they are in a category of work that is unprotected. In particular, the expansion of precarious work makes people more vulnerable to forced labour. The ILO has estimated that more than 75% of the global workforce is in temporary, informal, or unpaid work: so, “only a quarter of workers have the security of permanent contracts”.

Sexism and Racism

Some people are made more vulnerable to forced labour because some part of their identity denies them rights and full personhood. Although different, intersecting forms of discrimination play a role in forced labour, sexism is one of the most prominent dimensions.

Authoritarianism

State-imposed forced labour is largely a product of authoritarianism.

State Fragility and Conflict

On the other hand, state fragility and conflict can create opportunities for rebels and criminal organizations (and sometimes the government) to carry out illegal exploitation of workers.

Global Capitalism

Several facets of our global economy create pressure within the market for exploitable forms of labour and create spaces for exploitation. A report by openDemocracy and the Sheffield Political Economy Research Institute identifies four of what they refer to as “demand side” causes of forced labour: concentrated corporate power and ownership; outsourcing; irresponsible sourcing practices (E.g., fast fashion’s quick turnaround); and governance gaps.

Forced labour in global supply chains

The US Department of Labor produces a list of goods produced by child labor or forced labor. The most recent report is for 2018, and it is LOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG. Forced labour can appear in any industry, and can affect the supply chains or direct operations of companies of different sizes.

The top five products at most risk of modern slavery, according to the Walk Free Foundation, are:

1. Laptops, mobile phones, and computers ($200.1 billion in at-risk products imported into the G20);

2. Garments ($127.7 billion);

3. Fish ($12.9 billion);

4. Cocoa ($3.6 billion); and

5. Sugarcane ($2.1 billion).

Every year, over $34 billion in goods imported into Canada are “at a high risk of having been produced by child or forced labour.” “More than 1,200 companies operating in Canada were identified as having imported one or more of these high-risk goods.” For global figures, see the Global Slavery Index produced by the Walk Free Foundation.

Workers are particularly vulnerable to forced labour in the lower tiers of global supply chains – extracting raw inputs and processing them. While forced labour is a complicated challenge, it is possible for companies to monitor their supply chains to reduce the risk that they are complicit.

Preventing forced labour in global supply chains

Companies can work to prevent forced labour in their supply chains by having policies, knowing where in their supply chain there are risks of forced labour; having supplier codes of conduct and carrying out due diligence; and training staff to recognize forced labour.

What should you do about it? 

Pick Leading Big Brands

You can try to look for brands that are taking action to address forced labour in their supply chains. But know that these leading brands have not eliminated forced labour.

For example, in 2019 the UK police uncovered the largest modern slavery operation in its history, involving 400 Polish trafficked workers. Some of those victims were employed by second-tier suppliers to major supermarket and building supply chains, including Tesco and Sainsbury’s – the two leading companies in Oxfam’s Supermarkets Scorecard for performance in protecting human rights.

Right now, there are no big brands that have truly eliminated forced labour from their supply chains. But there are companies that are doing much better than others.

The Stop Slavery Award recognizes companies with strong policies and processes to limit the risk of slavery in their supply chains and operations, as well as those acting as key agents in the global fight against slavery. Some previous winners include Apple, Unilever, Adidas, Intel, and Co-op.

Know the Chain’s benchmarking reports can help you find leaders and laggards in apparel and footwear; food and beverage; and information and communications technology.

Try Fairtrade

To the extent that Fairtrade labels are available, they can provide an alternative that is likely to be free from forced labour.

Fair trade is a set of movements, campaigns, and initiatives that have emerged in response to the negative effects of globalization. A product that is certified as Fairtrade has met a set of standards on pay, working conditions, and sometimes other social or environmental criteria. As we discussed in the Sugar episode, there are also fair trade member systems that work a bit differently.

However, there are some critiques of Fairtrade. Some see the use of fairtrade certification as “fairwashing” – meaning a way to superficially seem like a company is doing well on workers’ rights without actually addressing the problem. Critics tend not to argue that fair trade products are not living up to the standards established by certifying bodies. Instead, they argue that fair trade does not address the root causes of problems like forced labour.  

Boycott?

A boycott can be tempting, but it is almost impossible and potentially counterproductive. In his TEDx Talk, a Foreign Affairs producer at PBS Newshour named P.J. Tobia recommends focusing on one product at a time and learning about how the supply chain works, what is causing forced labour in that issue, and what solutions are being proposed. Then you can support NGOs working on the problem or lend your voice to promote policy change or to push a company to change its practices.

Use Your Voice to Promote Human Rights

Another thing you can do is tell your representative that you care about ratifying the ILO Protocol on Forced Labour. The Protocol on Forced Labour is an international treaty. To enter into force, it needs 50 states to ratify and currently only 45 states have done so.

If ratified, the Protocol on Forced Labour would require governments to take new measures to address forced labour. For instance, countries will need to increase inspections to protect workers and guarantee victims access to justice and compensation. Canada has already ratified, but the United States and Australia both have not. You can find out more about the ILO Protocol on Forced Labour and how to get involved at the 50 for Freedom campaign website.

In Canada, tell your Member of Parliament that you want to see the Modern Slavery Act (Bill S-211) become law, but you want it to include: higher penalties, due diligence requirements, and a broader focus on human rights (in addition to child and forced labour). The Modern Slavery Act would create an obligation for companies to report to the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness on steps taken to prevent and reduce the risk of forced or child labour in any step of the production process. This Act is not as strong as its French and Dutch counterparts, but it is a good first step.

The UK’s Modern Slavery Act 2015 is the first such legislation, though other jurisdictions such as California and Australia now have similar laws. Most modern slavery laws only apply to large companies – for instance, only 150 companies are covered under the French legislation.

The Canadian Act was introduced for a first reading in the Senate in February. Read the report that spurred this legislation.

The Challenge

For our challenge, Kyla and I each looked at a specific good that has been linked to forced labour by the US Department of Labor. I chose rice. Kyla chose Christmas lights.

According to the US Department of Labour’s Sweat and Toil app, there has been forced labour documented in rice production in Burma, India, and Mali (as well as child labour in a few other countries).  

India: debt bondage

In 2007, 24 people were rescued from a rice mill in India. They had been “abused and enslaved” there. The mill owner was convicted under India’s Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act in 2018. There is another story from 2019 where a pregnant woman named Soniya working in debt bondage at a rice mill lost her baby because of the harsh working conditions. Even though debt bondage is illegal in India, in the country’s 2011 census India identified more than 135,000 bonded workers. Of course, the real figure is likely a lot higher – International Justice Mission estimates 500,000 bonded labourers just in the state of Tamil Nadu.

Myanmar: state-imposed forced labour

In Myanmar, there are accounts of up to 8,000 Rohingya Muslims being forced into hard labour by soldiers. Rice production is one of the industries in which this kind of forced labour occurs.

Mali: descent-based slavery

For Mali, forced labour primarily happens in rice production because members of the Bellah or Ikelan community in Northern Mali are often enslaved by Tuareg communities. Tuareg society is an ethnically casted society with five tiers. Three tiers are perceived racially as “white”, according to an article by Baz Lecocq. The lowest two tiers are perceived racially as “black”, a grouping of craftspeople and then the unfree caste of slaves. Colonialism reinforced this hierarchical pyramid, particularly the links between race and bondage. Mali is one of three countries in Western Africa where Anti-Slavery International has undertaken initiatives to address descent-based slavery.

Endnotes

[1] Amnesty International. (2017). Turning People into Profits: Abusive Recruitment, Trafficking and Forced Labour of Nepali Migrant Workers. London: Amnesty International Ltd.

Episode 35 - Eating Insects

Kristen is on vacation, so Kyla took the reigns on this look into the future of eating insects. This was a topic we had discussed when originally brainstorming for the show, and we’re excited to finally eat our cricket powder.

A lot of the information for this episode was taken from a 2013 paper by the FAO, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. It’s called Edible Insects: Future Prospects for Food and Feed Security. Before this report came out, there was very little conversation happening on the subject, so this kick-started the discussion.

History of Eating Insects

The practice of eating insects is called entomophagy, and we’ve been doing it since prehistoric times. Shoutout to the wiki article on entomophagy which is extremely well written. I recommend checking it out as a starting point for those who want to learn more after the episode.

Around 2 billion people eat insects around the world, mostly in Central and South America, Africa, Asia, and even a bit in Australia and New Zealand, although it’s less common from my experience. It’s more taboo in western culture, but it shouldn’t be! It’s slowly becoming more acceptable in western cultures to eat insects, and in Seattle toasted grasshoppers are a big hit at Mariners baseball games.

There are about 2000 arthropods globally that are known to be safe for human consumption. Arthropods are invertebrate animals with an exoskeleton, segmented body, and paired jointed appendages. The category includes insects, arachnids, myriapods (centipedes, millipedes etc), and crustaceans. So if you’re eating crab and lobster, you’re already partway there. Crickets are so similar to shellfish they put allergy warnings on cricket powder saying people with shellfish allergies may react to cricket as well.

It’s kind of funny that we eat lobster, which used to be fed to servants and prison inmates until rules were passed to prevent something considered so cruel. Perhaps we’ll soon be there with bugs!

So why don’t we eat them in the west? A New York Times article suggests that because Europe spent so much of it’s history covered in ice, it only has about 2% of the world’s edible insects and they don’t get nearly as big as they do in warmer climates, so they were never worth hunting. We associate them with things that are dirty or decaying or carrying disease. Also the bible says not to do it (Leviticus 11:41 ‘And every creeping thing that creeps on the earth shall be an abomination. It shall not be eaten.’) so that’s that. Early explorers saw people eating insects in different countries and viewed it as animal-like. As Europeans took over large parts of the world, they took the idea of not eating insects with them, so we can thank colonialism for setting us way back on this one. Missionaries were especially influential in Africa and changed the way people viewed eating insects.

To be fair, it’s not like we’re super weird for not eating insects. Out of 800,000 arthropods, only 2000 are edible. But that same article says we can expect rapid growth in demand in the west for insects in the next few years, which is promising because there’s lots of great reasons to eat bugs!

Surprise, we already eat bugs!

Each year we eat 2lbs of insects! What?? They wind up in food like peanut butter, spices, or canned fruit and veg. The US FDA allows certain quantities to pass into the food Americans buy. “For every ¼ cup of cornmeal, the FDA allows an average of one or more whole insects, two or more rodent hairs and 50 or more insect fragments, or one or more fragments of rodent dung.” - CNN

Not to mention honey. A teaspoon of honey represents the lifetime regurgitation of 50 bees. So we’re already consuming hidden insects and the byproducts of insects. Pass the cricket powder! 

What insects do people eat?

The most popular are beetles, caterpillars, bees, wasps, ants, grasshoppers, locusts, and crickets.

I saw scorpions on sticks in Beijing, and bought mealworm and cricket powder here in Canada. In Australia, on a tour I did in Darwin, ants are picked right off of trees and eaten by brave tourists. They taste citrusy and are high in vitamin C.

In Kushihara Japan there’s an annual wasp festival where wasp-hunters sell snacks like wasp mochi, chocolate wasps, and full wasp nests. It’s all considered a delicacy.

There are loads of insects to eat! Dragonflies, grubs, termites, the list goes on.

Why Eat Bugs?

Everyone who eats insects say they’re tasty. 2 billion people aren’t eating bugs because they DON’T taste good. Apparently stinkbugs taste like apples. But just as important, they’re sustainable alternatives to the meat industry.

From an article by Samuel Imathiu from the University of Agriculture and Technology, Nairobi, Kenya

“The current research evidence shows that edible insects can play a significant role in addressing food and nutrition insecurities and this should be encouraged. Scientific evidence shows that edible insects’ nutritional quality is equivalent and sometimes exceeds that of animal-based foods. This and the fact that edible insects have a faster growth rate, high food conversion efficiency and requires less resources to rear compared to livestock should make them a more attractive quality food source especially to the rural poor in the developing countries.”

Environmental Benefits

We’ve talked a lot already in previous episodes about how animal agriculture is a big culprit in climate change, but as a refresher, livestock account for 14% of global greenhouse gas emissions, and use about 70% of the world’s agricultural land. And production is expected to ramp up as global demand continues to increase. As countries become wealthier, and more urbanized, they’re meat consumption grows. So, fighting climate change means overhauling our current food system. Eating insects can help in a few ways.

1) Insects can be fed on food industry by-products, which helps reduce waste and environmental contamination. This would be more for the insects being raised as feed for other animals. For people, we want to feed bugs food grade food. Or if the waste they’re eating is food waste like apple cores and melon rinds, stuff like that, then it would probably be alright for us. But this needs more study, and most of the farms I looked into feed them a grain meal. Here is a little more information than we went into on the episode.

2) Less food waste, since the whole cricket is being used. In addition, Entomo Farms (where I got my cricket powder) says their crickets’ manure and sheddings, called frass, are sold to farmers and gardeners as high quality fertilizer.

3) Insects emit fewer greenhouse gases and less ammonia than cattle or pigs. Methane, one of the worst greenhouse gases, is produced by only a few insect groups, such as termites and cockroaches. Overall, bugs produce one tenth as much methane as conventional livestock. When compared to chickens, which are greener than bigger livestock, crickets emit half as much C02 and use 25 percent less water. From the FAO paper:

4) They need less land, water, and food, and you don’t have to clear cut spaces to raise them. “Because they are cold-blooded, insects are very efficient at converting feed into protein (crickets, for example, need 12 times less feed than cattle, four times less feed than sheep, and half as much feed as pigs and broiler chickens to produce the same amount of protein)”.

As an email from Entomo Farms put it “less feed means less land, water, fertilizers, and transportation”. However, this is a little contested. When fed certain organic waste diets they’ve been found to have the same feed conversion as chickens. The feed the big farms use do make them more efficient, but everyone is still trying to figure out the best stuff to feed them.

By 2025, nearly 2 billion people are expected to be living with water scarcity, and more than half of our freshwater is being used in agriculture. 1kg of animal protein requires 5-20 times more water than 1kg of grain protein, or 100 times if you include the water required for forage and grain production to feed the animals. 1kg of beef requires 22000-43000 litres of fresh water. Cricket needs less, although the numbers are all over the place when I look it up. The highest estimates were 100-250l, but one source said 10l and another said 1l. Regardless, at the highest estimate it’s still a huge drop from the water requirements of cows.

For land, you need about 200 square metres to grow 1lb of beef, but you only need 15 square metres to grow 1lb of cricket. They could be good for vertical farming if they’re being kept in crates. One farm said 10’x3’ crates are used, but they can be kept in smaller boxes for small scale operations.

5) Insects are ready to eat way faster than other animals. They transform from larva to adults within weeks. There are loads of species of crickets, but most of them die of old age after 10 weeks, and none live more than a year.

As a bonus, all of the ways bugs are more environmentally friendly than livestock also makes them cheaper. While it’s still a little pricey to get insects here in Canada, it will become more cost effective for the consumer when everyone is eating them.

Eating insects isn’t just for people. They can be used to feed pets and livestock! We’ll probably have to start using them as our food’s food. The FAO figures worldwide production of animal feed will have to increase by as much as 70 percent to be able to feed the world by 2050, when we’ll have around 9 billion people on the planet. Switching from meat meal, fish meal, and soybean meal would help mitigate the production problems that come with those industries. We’ve talked about these problems in our milk, vegetarian, and seafood episodes in a bit more detail.

Health Benefits

Insects contain loads of protein, vitamins, minerals, and amino acids. They’re loaded with omega 3 fats, iron, magnesium, calcium, zinc, and fibre. The exoskeleton of insects actually makes their fibre content pretty high. This obviously varies widely based on the insects being eaten. There are nearly 2000 remember! But for the most part they’re hella good for you.

Entomo Farms talk about the nutrients in cricket powder on their site and use what I think is a misleading metric, which is comparing the nutrients to beef, pound for pound. My cricket powder was really expensive, and I won’t be able to eat a whole pound of cricket the same way I could eat a cheese burger. Or at least I can’t yet, I demand a cricket cheeseburger!
Although, 2tbsp have 400% of my B12 intake. So maybe I don’t need a cricket burger. But if I do want one, I just have to wait; as production ramps up, price will go down.

“Compared with mammals and birds, insects may also pose less risk of transmitting zoonotic infections to humans, livestock and wildlife, although this topic requires further research.” So mad cow and H1N1 and salmonella for example appear to be less likely to be transmitted. But because we’re not farming insects on large scale right now, more research should be done.

Pest Harvesting and Lifting People out of Poverty

From the wiki article on Entomophagy: Some researchers have proposed entomophagy as a solution to policy incoherence created by traditional agriculture, by which conditions are created which favor a few insect species, which then multiply and are termed "pests". In parts of Mexico, the grasshopper Sphenarium purpurascens is controlled by its capture and use as food. Such strategies allow decreased use of pesticide and create a source of income for farmers totaling nearly US$3000 per family. Environmental impact aside, some argue that pesticide use is inefficient economically due to its destruction of insects which may contain up to 75 percent animal protein in order to save crops containing no more than 14 percent protein.

“In the past two decades, villagers in impoverished north-eastern Thailand have started housing crickets in concrete pens in their backyards. As demand for the insects has risen, so have profits: One farmer reportedly went from selling 10 kilograms to more than two tons a day. Now around 20,000 such farms have been established, collectively earning more than $3 million a year.” - New York Times

Is It Cruel?

As Kristen has said before on the show, it’s a little tricky when you look at how one cow can feed a number of people, while a number of crickets are needed to feed one person. So is it ethical to do that?

There hasn’t been much research done on insect welfare and laws are suuuuper loose about how to raise and protect insects. The farm I bought my powder from puts the cricket welfare in their advertising, but I don’t think we should rely on the kindness of cricket farmers entirely.

It’s most likely that insects do not feel pain, but we’re not sure. So, the safest thing to do is to regulate the treatment of insects in farming. Kristen was a little skeptical of the “they probably don’t feel pain?” argument I offered, so here’s all the reading I did on it to land on that unhelpful statement.

It’s pretty easy to kill insects humanely and unlike mammals, they like living in high density situations. It’s important to regulate the slaughter methods, because there are humane ways to do it, such as lowering the temperature until they go into hibernation and then eventually die (24hrs to be safe), and inhumane, like boiling, frying, steaming, roasting, etc. There are some that are served and eaten still alive, which ranks pretty low on my humane scale.

Entomo says they treat the crickets ethically. They live at least 80% of their natural life cycle in large open rooms instead of crates. They roam freely and have constant access to food and water. I guess that’s better?

For farms that do use crates, they’re reasoning is that crates can be stacked to use space more efficiently and they’re usually given nooks and crannies and objects to climb on and hide in, for they’re comfort.

Brian Tomasik, who writes about reducing animal suffering, argues that eating insects isn’t ethical, and one of his best points was: is it ethical to bring more insects into existence in farming operations, if their lives are worse off than in their natural habitat? Even if large farms do a good job, amateur farms are likely to cause harm by neglect or making mistakes, like forgetting to feed and water them.

What do you think?

Downsides of Eating Insects

We have to be careful of over-doing it. Most insects are still harvested from the wild rather than farmed, so it’s possible to accidentally destroy the local insect population. From what I could find this is pretty rare, but still something to consider.

Wild caught insects are also more likely to have pesticides if they’ve been hanging around crops, which is a bad thing for us to be eating.

Because production isn’t mainstream, there needs to be more studies done on concentrations of heavy metals, pesticides, and allergens. Also, infrastructure and machinery for mainstream harvesting is still new and it’s loosely regulated or not regulated at all in most countries. It’s hard to know how safe the production process is for turning out food. If insects are being raised on farms with poor quality or straight up rotten feed, then humans are getting that nasty bacteria.

We have to be careful about introducing insects into environments where they might cause harm. It’s difficult to bring live insects into Australia, for example, and I don’t think that’s a bad thing. While farms might remain mostly closed, it’s gotta be pretty hard to contain them fully.

Because farming insects is not a well understood industry, scaling it up to meet the demands of a population pushing 8 billion people will probably bring surprise issues that are difficult to see now but obvious in hindsight.

They look nasty as fuck. I read an article by Angela Skujins who tried to eat insects in every meal for a week, and it was a huge failure, she lost 4 pounds and thought she’d die of starvation.

Crickets still need to eat food. So they’ll still require crops and energy from heating their facilities (although because they like darkness, a bit of energy is saved by keeping the lights out).

Overall, if you’re looking for the most ethical diet, it’s still vegan.

So Are We All Going To Be Eating Insects?

The industry is slowly growing. In 2018 Sainsbury’s in the UK started carrying Crunchy Roasted Crickets. Whole Foods and Loblaw here in Canada also apparently stock it, although I’ve never noticed and I’ll have to watch out for it now. More than 100 companies currently exist that produce their own branded foods made from insects.

The industry was worth less than a billion dollars in 2019, but is projected to be worth as much as 8 billion dollars by 2030.

Aspire Food Group, a farm in Texas, is ramping up the size of it’s operation because demand for cricket powder is so high.

So will people eat bugs? Yeah probably someday. Sushi was very stigmatized when it was first introduced in the west but grew popular because restaurants put it on their menus and patrons trusted the chefs to present something edible. We might just be one popular restaurant chain and an influencer munching on a cricket burger away from cricket chips in every cupboard.

Further Info

Fun Fact of the episode: when crickets are ready to mate, they make their chirping noise. If a whole bunch of them are ready to go at once, it gets hella loud in the big farms and farmers have to wear headphones.

Here is a great short video on eating insects!

And another!

And a podcast episode from Wall Street Journal’s Future of Everything

Episode 34 - Operation Breadbasket

Boycotts

There are at least 198 methods of nonviolent action. And within this list, the word “boycott” features 17 times. A boycott campaign consists of a concerted refusal to spend money – as well as to convince others to refuse to spend money – on a product or service in the hopes of changing specific conditions or practices of an institution.

Although boycott campaigns draw on an adversarial communication frame, reform and redemption narratives often also accompany these campaigns because it is necessary to convince people that already consume a given product or service to stop doing so for a period of time. After all, there would hardly be a motive for businesses to change their behavior if the only people boycotting were those who did not consume the product in the first place.

Boycott campaigns typically escalate in four stages: announcing that a boycott is under consideration; calling for the boycott to begin at a certain point in the future; publicizing boycott preparations and any organizing that is underway; and initiating the boycott via demonstrations or picket lines. Notably, many boycott campaigns achieve their goals before reaching the fourth stage of actually initiating the boycott.

For over 200 years, the consumer boycott campaign has been a method of holding corporations accountable for their environmental and human rights practices, as well as those of their suppliers.

Boycotts and Civil Rights

Quick Summary of Civil Rights Movement

In typical narratives, the civil rights movement gave way to the black power movement after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis in April 1968.[1]

The civil rights movement focused on ending discrimination, especially segregation, and establishing equal rights in law, whereas the black power movement emphasized black pride and black community control. The civil rights movement is most embodied by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), which was formed in 1957 following the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

The black power movement is most closely associated with the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense (BPP), which was founded in 1966 by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale. The Black Panthers challenged police brutality through armed citizen patrols. They also carried out a number of community self-help programs like school lunches.

It is fair to say that the Black Panthers represent a more revolutionary movement, in contrast to the SCLC, which was tightly connected to Christian faith communities. The Black Panthers adopted a Marxist ideology and held the view that nonviolent direct action was inadequate to protect Black Americans from violence.

Deppe in his book emphasizes how these movements were really connected to a certain degree – ideologically, Operation Breadbasket took on elements of Black power as that movement started to gain ascendancy. 

One thing that I find interesting about the Breadbasket story, though, is that both movements were complementary. While Operation Breadbasket took a softer approach – negotiating with companies and occasionally practicing economic withdrawal – a looming background feature of their interaction with companies were the riots happening across American cities in the mid-late 1960s.

Why Operation Breadbasket?

Operation Breadbasket was a part of the civil rights movement that often gets ignored, but in fact it was one of the most successful elements of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)’s activities.[2]

One reason to talk about it is that it adds to our understanding of racial equality movements in the 20th century. As Martin Deppe argues in his book, Operation Breadbasket challenges the narrative that the civil rights movement faltered after MLK Jr.’s assassination and was replaced by the Black Power movement.[3]

Operation Breadbasket continued until 1971.[4] As Breadbasket continued, it incorporated certain elements of Black Power while also adhering to SCLC principles like nonviolence.[5]

And although Operation Breadbasket no longer exists in its current form, it continued as what is now known as Rainbow PUSH.[6]

A second reason to talk about Operation Breadbasket is broader: it provides a good model for how consumer power can play an important role in social change. Operation Breadbasket provides a successful model of direct action that continues today. It is also a powerful illustration of how well-organized boycott campaigns can work.

Boycotts and Civil Rights

Operation Breadbasket of course not first boycott movement used to fight anti-black racism in the US.

Don’t Buy Where You Can’t Work

In 1929 Chicago, picketers launched a boycott of a department store called Woolworth under a “Don’t Buy Where You Can’t Work” campaign. Woolworth agreed to a policy of hiring 25% Black employees in its stores, resulting in 2,000 jobs.[7]

The Montgomery Bus Boycott

Perhaps the most famous example is the Montgomery Bus Boycott, a boycott beginning in December 1955 that went on for 381 days. The bus boycotts were about more than desegregating buses. Black Americans did not only want to ride buses alongside white Americans: they also wanted to drive buses and own bus companies.[8]

The Birmingham Campaign (1963)

Campaign to end discriminatory economic policies. It included a boycott of businesses that hired only white people or maintained segregated restrooms.

Selective Patronage

Reverend Leon Sullivan of Philadelphia selective patronage, which refers to the strategic withholding of black patronage from businesses that discriminate, especially on Black employment. Selective patronage was inspired by the sit-ins in the deep South.

Leon Sullivan created a program where teams of ministers negotiated for jobs with corporations doing business in Black communities, with the threat of boycotts. By 1963, this program had opened up 2,000 skilled jobs in Philadelphia.[9] Sullivan was asked to present on this model to the SCLC in Atlanta. That presentation led to the creation of Operation Breadbasket in Atlanta in 1962.

Operation Breadbasket

Economic Liberation

Between 1916 and 1970, more than 6 million Black Americans relocated from the rural South to cities in Northern, Midwestern, and Western America. This Great Migration was prompted by the harsh segregationist laws and poor economic opportunities in the south. Economic opportunities for Black Americans during the first and second world wars helped to spur this trend.

When WWI ended many Black Americans were fired or expected to return to unskilled jobs. The Great Depression was particularly harsh on Black unemployment: in 1931, 58.5 percent of employable Black women and 43.5 percent of employable Black men were unemployed.[10]

While Black employment rose during WWII and continued during the period of general economic prosperity in the 1950s, by 1960 the job ceiling for Black Americans became an increasing point of contention.[11] By the mid-1960s the unemployment rate amongst Black Chicagoans was twice that of white Chicagoans, for example.[12]

Deindustrialization and the loss of American manufacturing made this situation worse.[13]At the same time, the mid-1960s was a period of protest – which in some cases resulted in violence. There was a growing sense that Black Americans “would no longer quietly submit to the deprivation of slum life.”[14]

President Lyndon B Johnson is quotes as saying privately: “The Negro…[is] still nowhere. He knows it. And that’s why he’s out in the streets. Hell, I’d be there too.”[15]

It was in this context that SCLC moved north in the 1960s to address a new form of segregation – the slum. Housing equality and economic liberation became focal points. Early housing efforts failed due to intransigence from the Mayor, and so jobs became the primary focus. Operation Breadbasket “was a response to the color line in employment.”[16] 

Operation Breadbasket

The SCLC first established Operation Breadbasket in 1962 in Atlanta. Breadbasket was explicitly modelled on Leon Sullivan’s selective patronage.[17] Operation Breadbasket in Atlanta began with the bread industry. The first campaign was against Colonial Bakery, which gave in to Breadbasket’s demands after a boycott and picketing. Between 1962 and 1966, Atlanta Breadbasket won 4,000 jobs and $15 million of income to the Black community there.[18]

Chicago Breadbasket

When SCLC moved north to Chicago, Operation Breadbasket was formed there and became a core element of the SCLC’s overall strategy. Specifically, Breadbasket was launched in Chicago in 1966 with a group of 60 pastors who together formed a steering committee.[19] Reverend Jesse Jackson led Chicago Breadbasket, with guidance from Martin Luther King Jr..[20] Breadbasket was significant in launching Jackson’s civil rights career.[21]

Operation Breadbasket obtained its name from the concept of a breadbasket as “putting food on the table in the form of a steady job”[22]

The Breadbasket Model

Operation Breadbasket had a number of components, but its main focus was creating job opportunities for Black Americans through consumer pressure. The model included six core steps:

1.     Information gathering: a team of clergy would go to the company and request a copy of its Equal Employment Opportunity Commission annual report, a document mandated by the 1964 Civil Rights Act. They also asked for salaries by category.

2.     Committee Evaluation: Then, the committee would decide on a set of demands. The baseline was a minimum demand of 20% Black employees (28% of Chicagoans were Black at the time), but this could be adjusted based on factors like where the company was operating.

3.     Education and negotiation: then a team of clergy would meet with company executives to try to reach agreement on targets and deadlines for a “covenant”.

4.     Economic withdrawal and picketing: when CEOs refused to share information or to continue discussions, pastors would call for a boycott from their pulpits. This would be coupled with picketing and leafleting. Economic withdrawal was not necessary in every case, but it was pretty common.

5.     Agreement/Covenant: when the Breadbasket team and the company agreed on a set of targets, they would formalize it in an agreement or covenant. At that time, any economic withdrawal would be officially called off. The agreements would be signed at a formal ceremony.

6.     Monitoring: this was a later addition to the strategy, but it proved important. Breadbasket team members would regularly follow up to monitor the implementation of the agreements. When companies didn’t hold to their commitments (or reasonably close), Breadbasket would initiate another economic withdrawal.

Outcomes

Chicago Breadbasket began with the bread, milk, soft drink, and soup companies, before moving on to other industries like supermarkets and construction.

In the six years that Operation Breadbasket operated, it created 4,500 jobs for Black Chicagoans, an estimated $29 million in income annually.[23] That’s not including the income it created for black products and service contracts – if you include that, Breadbasket created $57.5 million annually for the African American community by 1971 (equivalent to $391.8 million in 2016 dollars).[24]

Operation Breadbasket is forerunner to Operation PUSH (1971), which is now the Rainbow PUSH Coalition (formed in 1987).

The Challenge

Stop Hate for Profit boycott movement, which is calling on companies to boycott Facebook Ads until Facebook agrees to establish and empower permanent civil rights infrastructure so products and policies can be evaluated for discrimination, racism, and hate by experts.

Stop Hate for Profit is promoted by a coalition of various racial equality groups, as well as at least one union and Mozilla.

Footnotes

[1] Deppe, Martin. (2017). Operation Breadbasket: An Untold Story of Civil Rights in Chicago, 1966-1971. Atlanta: University of Georgia Press.

[2] Deppe, Operation Breadbasket.

[3] Deppe, Operation Breadbasket.

[4] Deppe, Operation Breadbasket.

[5] Deppe, Operation Breadbasket.

[6] Deppe, Operation Breadbasket.

[7] Deppe, Operation Breadbasket.

[8] Ezra, Michael. (2013). Introduction: The Economic Dimensions of the Black Freedom Struggle. In M. Ezra (ed.) The Economic Civil Rights Movement: African Americans and the Struggle for Economic Power. New York: Routledge, pp. 1-5.

[9] Deppe, Operation Breadbasket.

[10] Deppe, Operation Breadbasket.

[11] Deppe, Operation Breadbasket.

[12] Deppe, Operation Breadbasket.

[13] Deppe, Operation Breadbasket.

[14] Deppe, Operation Breadbasket p.7.

[15] Deppe, Operation Breadbasket p.7.

[16] Deppe, Operation Breadbasket p.5.

[17] Deppe, Operation Breadbasket.

[18] Deppe, Operation Breadbasket.

[19] Deppe, Operation Breadbasket.

[20] Deppe, Operation Breadbasket.

[21] Deppe, Operation Breadbasket.

[22] Deppe, Operation Breadbasket xxvii.

[23] Deppe, Operation Breadbasket.

[24] Deppe, Operation Breadbasket.

Episode 33 - Carbon Offsets

What Are Carbon Offsets?

Carbon offsets compensate for emissions by financing emissions-reducing projects somewhere else in the world. So, to take an example from Umair Irfan’s Vox article: let’s say a steel mill wants to reduce its emissions. Rather than waiting years to install new zero-emissions technology, the steel mill could start mitigating its emissions immediately by buying carbon offsets.

Types of projects

• Deforestation prevention

• Renewable energy projects, biogas projects

• Methane capture

• Energy demand projects: energy efficiency, like distributing efficient cookstoves

The cost of carbon offsets varies, but typically the price is around $12 USD/tonne of CO2 offset.

For context, a flight from Toronto to Vancouver generates about 0.6 tonnes of carbon. I used the Less Emissions calculator for my upcoming Ottawa – Edmonton roundtrip flight, and it came out to 1.1 tonnes of carbon, which cost $27 CAD to offset through a Gold Standard-certified international offset project (there was a cheaper option available but it was CSA-Standard Certified). The Carbonzero calculator estimated 1.45 tonnes for the same flight path, so I’m not sure what accounts for the difference there.

The average Ontarian uses about 11 tonnes of carbon annually. Half of that total comes from driving a car (2.2 tonnes), home heating (1.7 tonnes), air travel (1.4 tonnes), and eating beef (0.5 tonnes).

As a consumer, you can also buy some goods and services that include carbon neutrality as part of the price.

Who Does Carbon Offset Projects?

It’s a combination of businesses and NGOs.[1]

Who Is Using Carbon Offsets?

Globally, there is about $300 million per year in sales of voluntary carbon credits, trading almost 100 million metric tons of carbon.

The compliance offsets market (the market for carbon credits used to meet legally binding caps on carbon in schemes like the EU’s Emissions Trading System) is much larger, at somewhere between $40 billion and $120 billion.

Heavy emitters lean on carbon offsets more than other industries, because it is more difficult for them to decarbonize without a fundamental change in their business models – so, sectors like agriculture, aviation, and oil and gas.[2] Airlines are among the most vocal sectors on using emissions offsets.[3]

There is over 100 markets for carbon offsets already.[4] A lot of carbon offsets are built for compliance markets – so that companies can meet emissions targets when there is something like a cap and trade system in place.[5] For example, California’s cap-and-trade program allows companies to offset a small percentage of their carbon output with forest preservation projects in North America. The three biggest markets for carbon offsets are China, India, and the US.[6]

Consumers buy offsets, often by clicking the option when buying an air ticket. But others will purchase offsets as part of a commitment to carbon neutrality or to offset big carbon expenses like air fare. Governments also buy carbon offsets. For instance, Norway is the world’s largest supporter of the REDD scheme.

Major Carbon Offset/Credit Schemes

There are at least three United Nations schemes. The largest carbon offset scheme is the Clean Development Mechanism, a program that came out of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. The Clean Development Mechanism has a poor track record of meaningful reductions in emissions.

Joint Implementation is the other offsetting mechanism under the Kyoto Protocol. It enables countries with emissions reductions commitments to generate Emission Reduction Units (ERUs) and to transfer them to other countries. Joint Implementation is responsible for issuing one-third of all Kyoto offset credits. There are serious weaknesses with JI.

Then there is also the UN Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD). And a UN Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (CORSIA) will start in 2021.

There are other government-run schemes, such as the California Air Resources Board forest standard and new tropical standard. Canada is planning to establish an offsets market in the future. And there are a bunch of private carbon offset companies, such as Less and Carbonzero.

Principles of Good Carbon Offset Programs

From a positive point of view, carbon offsets put a price on pollution. Which can be a good thing and is the justification behind carbon taxes and other market-based climate policies.

For carbon offsetting to address climate change, there are several things that offsetting schemes must accomplish: additionality; third-party verification; permanence; avoiding leakage; social and environmental safeguards; and offset limits.

Additionality

It is important that carbon offset projects are effective, but that is not enough. That’s why carbon offsets experts talk about something called additionality. Additionality means asking: would this have happened anyway? Is the revenue from carbon offsetting actually supporting brand new decarbonization efforts? You have to be able to count reductions that wouldn’t have happened otherwise.

Additionality is the biggest measure of quality in a carbon offsetting project.[7] Clean energy projects have low additionality. Renewable energy projects already generate renewable energy certificates and they already have subsidy support. Although clean energy projects are the lowest quality type of carbon offset project, they are the biggest category of carbon offsets.[8]

You can much more directly claim additionality for reforestation projects (tree-planting).[9] Energy demand projects also have high additionality – that is things like clean cookstove distribution and energy efficiency projects.[10]

Some offset providers guarantee emissions savings, which essentially means that if the emissions savings don’t occur or if they turn out not to be additional the provider would make up the loss with another project.

In 2015 a French study found that 37% of REDD projects overlapped with existing protected lands like national parks.

Measurement and Third-Party Verification

Like with any social or environmental standard, you want to ensure that the standards are being verified by third-party auditors. Measuring emissions savings can be tricky. Some projects are much more difficult to measure than others. A methane capture project simply involves installing a sensor at, say, a coal mining operation. For forestry projects, you have to use satellite imagery to make sure that tree is still standing year after year. That’s difficult and expensive to do.[11]

Permanence

Permanence means: if you reduce the carbon with this project, is it going to stay sequestered? This is one of the main critiques of reforestation offsetting projects. Forests could be cut down or destroyed before emissions reductions have been generated. If you cut down a tree before 100 years, all of that carbon gets released into the atmosphere.[12]

Avoiding Leakage

Leakage refers to a situation where emissions reductions in one area result in greater emissions somewhere else. For example, forest protection somewhere could lead to logging somewhere else.

Social and Environmental Safeguards

Carbon offsetting should have safeguards to ensure that the project isn’t harming communities or undermining other environmental objectives. Without these safeguards, carbon offset projects can have negative impacts on local populations. For instance, a windfarm project displaced local farmers and didn’t generate the expected amount of power. And a 2015 green dam project in Guatemala was linked to the killing of six Indigenous protesters, two of which were children. That project is funded by the World Bank and will produce tradeable carbon credits.

Problems with Carbon Offsetting

The biggest problem with carbon offsetting is that a lot of projects fail to meet the principles described above. In particular, most carbon offset projects fail to meet the standard of additionality. But here are a few other common critiques.

Measurability and Pricing

Measurability issues can drive up the price of a carbon offsets project. As a result of measurability issues, reforestation projects – which are some of the potentially most effective projects from a sequestration perspective – are largely left out of carbon offset schemes.

Is this a Racket? A Scam?

Opaqueness of pricing of carbon offset projects undermines the legitimacy of the whole market. Companies have an incentive to choose a baseline scenario with inflated emissions, and that has occurred.

There is also evidence of fraud, exaggeration, and double-counting. In some cases, projects never get carried out – such as the example of a tree planting project in Panama. The carbon offsetting market continues to improve. While a decade ago, carbon offsets were a “wild west”, today there is a bit more structure.

Still, though, emissions reductions are overestimated in about 85% of offsets projects. Only 2% of projects have a high likelihood that emissions reductions are additional and are not over-estimated.

Moral Hazard

The climate advocate George Monbiot famously compared carbon offsets to indulgences in a 2006 Guardian column. His point was basically that carbon offsets make consumers and businesses complacent about the need to reduce our consumption. From that article:

“Any scheme that persuades us we can carry on polluting delays the point at which we grasp the nettle of climate change and accept that our lives have to change. But we cannot afford to delay. The big cuts have to be made now, and the longer we leave it, the harder it will be to prevent runaway climate change from taking place. By selling us a clean conscience, the offset companies are undermining the necessary political battle to tackle climate change at home. They are telling us we don't need to be citizens; we need only to be better consumers.”

 One thing that I think is pretty funny about this comparison is the fact that the Vatican used carbon offsets to declare itself the “first carbon-neutral sovereign state” in 2007. (Of course, the project they paid for never actually got done, so…)

There is also a cheeky site called CheatNeutral that pokes fun at carbon offsets by allowing you to be infidelity neutral by funding someone else to be faithful.

Some people have taken aim at these analogies. David Roberts at Grist has said the following about the indulgences comparison:

“If there really were such a thing as sin, and there was a finite amount of it in the world, and it was the aggregate amount of sin that mattered rather than any individual's contribution, and indulgences really did reduce aggregate sin, then indulgences would have been a perfectly sensible idea.”

But there is still the question of whether people (and businesses) use offsetting as a way to avoid changing other behaviours.

Reliance on Capitalism/Market Solutions

This argument is basically:

“Look, I think that we should save forests. Totally agree that we should save forests. I just don’t think that we should use capitalism to save forests. I don’t understand why everyone wants to use capitalism for everything.”[13]

Incrementalism

Carbon offsets can’t actually reduce emissions. At best, all they do is cancel out emissions that have already been produced. That can be a good thing, but when you take into account time horizons it is actually a big problem. Some offset projects – tree planting, for instance – can take decades to have emissions saving effects, if they ever do. And given the lock-in effects of climate change, not to mention the risk of run-away climate change, it might all be too little, too late. Carbon offsets have been around for decades, yet emissions are still increasing.

Low-Hanging Fruit

Offsets are cheap in part because there are lots of ways to reduce emissions very inexpensively. We could refer to these as quick wins. But what happens when the low-hanging fruit of emissions savings are used up?

Carbon Offset Certification Schemes

One way to ensure that you are buying carbon offsets that adhere to the principles set out above is to get offsets that adhere to a respected certification standard.

Voluntary Gold Standard

Voluntary Gold Standard (VGS) -certified offsets are audited according to the rules set out in the Kyoto Protocol. The Gold Standard is the highest global standard for carbon offsets. It’s the standard that the David Suzuki Foundation recommends using if you are going to buy carbon offsets.

Voluntary Carbon Standard

Voluntary Carbon Standard is the world’s most widely-used voluntary emissions certification program.

Other Third-Party Verification

Here are a few other third-party offset verification standards:

• CSA Standard-Certified Canadian Offsets

• Green-e

• American Carbon Registry

• Climate Action Reserve

• Climate, Community, and Biodiversity Standard

• Verra

• Rainforest Alliance

Should I Use Carbon Offsets?

For people and businesses, carbon offsetting should be a final lifeline: it should be something you do after you have done everything reasonable to reduce your emissions. 

For example, the sustainable shoe brand Allbirds has a three-step approach to carbon neutrality.

1. Measure emissions across the supply chain, including product end of life. They include a carbon score with all of their shoes. For instance, the runners that I bought this year from them have a footprint of 9.0 kilograms of carbon (which is below the average of 13.6 kilograms for running shoes generally). 

2. Reduce the carbon impact.

3. Offset anything that’s left.

That is generally the way companies should approach offsets. (As a quick note: while Allbirds is well-rated for environmental sustainability and animal welfare, Good On You has pointed out serious weaknesses in its labour practices.)

You should be extremely skeptical of any company that is using offsets as the main approach to sustainability. For example, a BBC investigation calculated that in order to offset the annual emissions of Ryan Air (which is positioning itself as the greenest airline), you would need to plant enough trees to cover 12% of the UK.[14]

As an individual, I would liken carbon offsets to donating to charity. It doesn’t get you out of your core ethical responsibilities, but you can use it to improve your overall moral contribution. Buy carbon offsets only where there are no feasible green alternatives (e.g., important long-distance air travel).

You can justifiably use carbon offsetting as a way to cut your overall footprint or as an incentive to be greener – like a self-applied carbon tax. But you may as well just donate to your favourite environmental group. In the episode, Robert makes the good point that our society’s obsession with measurement can get in the way of impact.

The real criticisms with carbon offsets come from businesses that use flawed offsets programs to meet government emissions standards.

Which Carbon Offsets Should I Buy?

Buy certified offsets, preferably from a standard with a registry of projects. Less.ca has several options for certified offsets and you can see the projects associated with them. This was also the top-rated offset program in a David Suzuki report (though it’s over a decade old now). Make sure the project is registered – that ensures that offsets are only sold once. Another suggestion is to choose projects that specifically help the world transition away from fossil fuels.

Endnotes

[1] Switched On Podcast. 19 May 2020. When Enough’s Not Enough, Try Carbon Offsets. Switched On Podcast.

[2] Switched On Podcast, “When Enough’s Not Enough.”

[3] Switched On Podcast, “When Enough’s Not Enough.”

[4] Switched On Podcast, “When Enough’s Not Enough.”

[5] Switched On Podcast, “When Enough’s Not Enough.”

[6] Switched On Podcast, “When Enough’s Not Enough.”

[7] Switched On Podcast, “When Enough’s Not Enough.”

[8] Switched On Podcast, “When Enough’s Not Enough.”

[9] Switched On Podcast, “When Enough’s Not Enough.”

[10] Switched On Podcast, “When Enough’s Not Enough.”

[11] Switched On Podcast, “When Enough’s Not Enough.”

[12] The Energy Gang Podcast. 2019. The Problem with Carbon Offsets. The Energy Gang Podcast.

[13] The Energy Gang Podcast, “The Problem with Carbon Offsets.”

[14] BBC Panorama. 11 November 2019. Can Flying Go Green? BBC, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPhOS4uXkmM&feature=youtu.be.

Episodes 30 and 31 - Plastic-free July

Plastic-free July

Like Veganuary, Plastic-free July is an awareness-raising campaign where people pledge to change their behaviour for a designated month of the year – but with the idea in mind that this will prompt lasting behaviour changes. It is run by the Plastic Free Foundation in Australia and claims to have “inspired over 250 million participants in 177 countries”. People can sign on to avoid single-used plastic packaging, to target the “top 4” takeaway items (bags, bottles, straws, and coffee cups), or to go completely plastic free.

What is Plastic?

The term “plastic” is derived from the Greek word “plastikos”, meaning fit for molding. Plastic is actually not one material – it refers to a range of synthetic or semi-synthetic materials that have the property of plasticity, meaning that they are capable of being moulded or shaped. Plastics also often have low density, low electrical conductivity, transparency, and toughness.

Plastics are synthetic polymers, which are materials made of long, repeating chains of molecules. (Natural polymers exist too and include rubber, wood, and proteins). Plastics are made from raw materials that make up the monomers. Then, monomers are transformed into polymers through polymerization. Then the polymers are processed into polymer resins and used to make final products.

Ethylene and propylene are two common monomers. They are by-products of the cracking process used in refining oil and natural gas. Plastic is the third most commonly used petroleum derivative in the world. 200 million tons of plastic are used annually worldwide.

History of Plastic

Horn and tortoise shell were used as early natural plastics, with the first recorded mention in 1284.

Alexander Parks in 1862 exhibited Parkesine (celluloid), the first commercial manmade version of plastic. It’s not widely used anymore because it is highly flammable and expensive to produce.

In 1907, Leo Baekeland invented Bakelite, the first truly synthetic plastic, was invented in New York. A Bakelite Corporation ad claimed that humans had transcended the old taxonomy of animal, mineral, and vegetable. Now the world had a “fourth kingdom, whose boundaries are unlimited.”[1]

In 1900-1920 casein plastics were developed by Erinoid, stockings made of viscose went into production, and Rolls Royce began to use phenol fromaldehyde in its car interiors.[2]

In 1929, Bakelite becomes the first mass produced plastic product (the phenolic moulding in the casing of the Siemens telephone). The 1930s is the start of the modern plastics era. Polyethylene is discovered in 1933. 

Modern plastic got its start during WWII.[3] Plastics were used in parachutes, grenades, and airplanes, among other military products. After the war ended, plastics companies began marketing their material for consumers.[4]

Disposable plastics use accelerated beginning in the 1950s as part of the consumer revolution. By 1979 we were producing more plastic than steel.[5] And in recent years there has been a shift from durable plastics made to single-use plastics.[6]

Types of Plastic

Plastic can be divided into two major categories:

• Thermoset plastics – these are plastics that, once cooled and hardened, retain their shapes and cannot return to their original form. They are hard and durable. (E.g., polyurethanes, polyesters, epoxy resins, phenolic resins).

• Thermo plastics – these are less rigid plastics that can soften upon heating and return to their original form. They are easily molded and extruded into films, fibres, and packaging. (E.g., polyethylene, polypropylene, polyvinyl chloride).

Some Common Plastics

• Polyethylene (PE) is the most common polymer in plastics. It was first made in 1934. You’ll see two main variants of PE today:

• Low density polyethylene (LDPE) is the plastic used in grocery bags. It is also used in plastic film and bread bags.

• High density polyethylene (HDPE) is a stiff plastic used for more robust plastic packaging like laundry detergent containers, shampoo bottles, and milk jugs. It is also the plastic used in things like trash bins.

• Polyethylene terephthalate (PETE or PET) is the most widely used plastic in the world, and it is used predominantly in polyester, as well as for bottles and packaging. It is the main plastic in Ziploc bags and is also used in things like cake trays.

• Polyvinyl chloride (PVC) is a strong, rigid, brittle plastic used in construction, like plumbing (pipe) and vinyl sidings. It is also used in mouthwash bottles and clear food packaging.

• Polypropylene (PP) is semi-transparent and has a low-friction surface. It is used for things like cheese containers, syrup bottles, and yogurt containers.

• Polystyrene (PS), or Styrofoam, is used in packaging. It’s also used in soft drink lids, takeaway containers, and medical devices like test tubes.

• Polylactic acid (PLA) is a biodegradable plastic derived from biomass rather than petroleum.

• Polycarbonate (PC) is a transparent material known for being strong relative to other plastics. It is used in greenhouses and riot gear.

• Acrylic (PMMA) is transparent and scratch resistant, which is why it’s the material used in optical devices.

• Acetal (Polyoxymethylene, POM) is known for high resistance to heat, abrasion, water, and chemical compounds. It also has a low “coefficient of friction”, which makes it useful in applications that utilize gears.

• Nylon (PA).

• Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene (ABS) is a hardy plastic that is easy to machine and has a low melting temperature. For that reason it is often used in 3D printing.

• Polytetrafluoroethylene (Teflon) was invented in 1938 by DuPont.

• Polyvinylidine chloride (Saran) is made by Dow.

Environment and Plastics

We introduced this topic briefly in the zero waste episode. We have produced 320 million metric tonnes of plastic, which is heavier than every human alive combined. And that figure is set to double by 2040. That’s a lot of plastic and we don’t have a good plan for dealing with it.

There are four main environmental problems with plastic.

1. Emissions: Plastic, a petroleum by-product, is contributing to climate change.

2. Pollution: The vast amounts of plastic we dispose every year in our packaging, containers, and clothing are polluting our land and water environments.

3. Animals: When plastic ends up in ecosystems it can kill animals who ingest it or become entangled in it. (Remember the starving albatross chick?)

4. Microplastics: Plastics shed microplastics, which get into our air, soil and water. In our laundry episode we talked about how plastic microfibres have been found in some of the most remote ecosystems on the planet. That is a problem because some of the chemicals in plastics may be (or have been shown to be) harmful or even toxic for animals and humans. 

Recycling Plastics

Of all the plastic we’ve produced thus far, only about 14% has ever been collected for recycling and only 5% has actually ever been recycled. There are different estimates on how much plastic currently gets recycled, but the estimates are generally low. I came across one estimate saying only about 1/5 of plastic is recycled. Another said that only 1/7 of plastic packaging is recycled and the ratio is even lower for other kinds of plastic.[7]

Some plastics can’t be recycled, while others can be recycled but aren’t accepted in municipal curbside recycling (so you would need to use a special program).

When recycling plastics, it is important to rinse any food or grease from the plastic – especially if you have a mixed bin that has paper in it. It does not need to be perfectly clean.

The most important thing to pay attention to is the number and letter code on the plastic. This refers to the type of plastic that the product is made out of. The number will be from 1 to 7. Generally speaking, lower number plastics are more likely to be recycled.[8]

Most curbside recycling programs will accept codes 1 (Polyethylene terephthalate, or PET/PETE), 2 (high density polyethylene, or HDPE), and 5 (Polypropylene, or PP).[9]  

Plastic number 3 (Vinyl, or PVC) is not generally collected in curbside bins but you can usually find someone who will recycle this material.[10]

Plastic number 4 (low-density polyethylene, or LDPE) is not usually recyclable in curbside bins. Nor is plastic number 6 (Styrofoam).[11] This is because these are not very valuable plastics so it is usually not profitable to recycle these materials, though they are recyclable.

Plastic number 7 is mixed plastic and it is often not recyclable.[12]

Bioplastics: Bio-based, Biodegradable, Compostable, and Oxo-degradable

Bio-based Plastics

There are a lot of materials called bioplastics that are not biodegradable. They are bio-based (made from plants) but are not biodegradable, because biodegradability depends on the chemical structure and not the source.[13]

Bioplastics contribute less than 1% to overall plastics production, though the market is growing.[14] More than half of the bioplastics on the market are just bio-based, not biodegradable.[15]

The bioplastics market is dominated by “drop in materials” like bio-based polyethylene or bio-based PET, which are more or less equivalent to their fossil-based counterparts.[16] They are made from bio-based sources, like sugarcane or corn, but are chemically identical to conventional plastics.[17] The advantage is that these bio-based plastics can be “dropped in” to existing production or recycling infrastructure – you don’t need new machines to deal with them.[18] 

There is some advantage to bio-based plastics from a climate change perspective, because they are made from renewable, plant-based resources they require less emissions to produce.

However, because bio-based plastics are not biodegradable, these do not solve the pollution or microplastics problems.

They also do not solve the emissions problem (though they are less emitting than petroleum plastics) because they still release stored carbon when they are incinerated – or if they are landfilled, they may be trapped for a time but release methane later.

And bio-based plastics can cause other problems, since it requires the conversion of land – which can either be wildland or might mean you’re growing food for plastics instead of food crops.[19] There are also the biodiversity, pesticide, and water use issues that have been raised in regard to bio-based plastics.[20] One possible solution is using waste materials or algae as a feedstock for bio-based plastics.[21]

Biodegradable Plastics

On the other hand, there are biodegradable plastics that are not bio-based.

Biodegradable plastics are a good idea, but they are difficult to make.[22] It’s difficult because chemists need to design a plastic that will fulfil all of the desired functions during its use as a product, while also ensuring that it will act as food for microorganisms.[23]

You need the plastics to not just break down (degrade) – they also need to biodegrade, otherwise you’re just creating more microplastics.[24] Organisms need to be able to completely break down the long molecule chains that make up plastics.[25] Which means we need the right microbe with the right enzyme for the right plastic.[26]

There are many types of biodegradable plastics, which can behave in different ways in different places.[27] Biodegradable plastics can take years to break down in the environment.

There are voluntary standards out there for certifying biodegradable plastics, but these usually make reference to biodegradation in specific conditions, like industrial composting. There aren’t yet biodegradability standards for the marine environment, which is not as ideal for biodegradation (it is cold, there is not a lot of sunlight, and there oftentimes is not a high concentration of microorganisms).[28] Since a lot of plastics end up in the oceans, this is maybe something we need to take into account. But this might be impossible as there is a lot of variety in ocean conditions, including different microorganisms – and recall that you need a match between the microorganism and the plastic.[29] But in the wrong situation, it may never break down.[30] So, we can never say for sure if any material biodegrades in the environment – it all depends on where it ends up. And even if it does eventually biodegrade, plastics in the ocean still pose a problem for marine life.

Compostable Plastics

Not all biodegradable plastics are compostable. But some are. So, what about compostable plastics?

Compostable plastic is bio-based plastic that will biodegrade in industrial composting. Compostable plastics cannot be composted in your home compost. And in some cases, it may not be accepted at commercial composting facilities. Check to make sure it’s accepted in your area’s green bin.

For example, it looks like Ottawa does not compost compostable plastic bags. It does accept plastic bags in compost, but that’s because they can sort and remove plastic bags. But ultimately if you put your compost in a compostable bag, it’ll get landfilled along with conventional plastic bags.

Some commercial facilities will compost their compostable plastic utensils and containers, but this is relatively rare. So, even though compostable plastics are a step forward, they usually end up in landfill anyway. Which means they generate methane.

Oxo-degradable Plastics

There is also something called oxo-plastics or oxo-degradable plastics. Oxo-degradable bags are made of conventional plastics, mixed with metal compounds that make them fall apart faster.[31] But it hasn’t been proven that oxo-degradable plastics biodegrade.[32] They might just degrade – meaning that it’s just producing more microplastics for us to eat, drink, and breathe.

So, Are Bioplastics a Solution?

To sum up: bioplastics are a tiny portion of the overall plastics market. Half of bioplastics are just bio-based, not biodegradable. And even if the plastic is biodegradable, it might only biodegrade in certain environments – and we don’t have good systems for ensuring the plastic you’re using will end up in the right place. Compostable plastics, when put in the compost, can be a partial solution.

But generally: bioplastics are not a solution to plastic pollution. To solve that issue you need to address our consumption and disposal of single-use plastics and short-lived plastic products. Instead, we need to reduce plastics – especially single-use plastics – wherever we can. The Plastic-free July website has some useful tips for getting started and next steps once you’ve done the basics. And we need to improve our recycling systems so that plastic actually gets recycled.

Take Action

In our interview with Sarah King of Greenpeace Canada, Sarah asked listeners to sign onto a petition calling for the Government of Canada to implement a strong single-use plastics ban. You can find that petition here.

This week, Kristen also recommends Plastisphere podcast!

Endnotes

[1]50 Things that Made the Modern World Podcast. (2017). Plastic. BBC World Service.

[2] 50 Things that Made the Modern World Podcast, “Plastic.”

[3] 50 Things that Made the Modern World Podcast, “Plastic.”

[4] 50 Things that Made the Modern World Podcast, “Plastic.”

[5] 50 Things that Made the Modern World Podcast, “Plastic.”

[6] 50 Things that Made the Modern World Podcast, “Plastic.”

[7] 50 Things that Made the Modern World Podcast, “Plastic.”

[8] Kellogg, Kathryn. (2019). 101 Ways to Go Zero Waste. New York: Countryman Press.

[9] Kellogg, Kathryn, 101 Ways to Go Zero Waste.

[10] Kellogg, Kathryn, 101 Ways to Go Zero Waste.

[11] Kellogg, Kathryn, 101 Ways to Go Zero Waste.

[12] Kellogg, Kathryn, 101 Ways to Go Zero Waste.

[13] Plastisphere Podcast, “Confused about Bioplastics?”.

[14] Plastisphere, “Confused about Bioplastics?”.

[15] Plastisphere, “Confused about Bioplastics?”.

[16] Plastisphere, “Confused about Bioplastics?”.

[17] Plastisphere, “Confused about Bioplastics?”.

[18] Plastisphere, “Confused about Bioplastics?”.

[19] Plastisphere, “Confused about Bioplastics?”.

[20] Plastisphere, “Confused about Bioplastics?”.

[21] Plastisphere, “Confused about Bioplastics?”.

[22] Plastisphere, “Confused about Bioplastics?”.

[23] Plastisphere, “Confused about Bioplastics?”.

[24] Plastisphere, “Confused about Bioplastics?”.

[25] Plastisphere, “Confused about Bioplastics?”.

[26] Plastisphere, “Confused about Bioplastics?”.

[27] Plastisphere, “Confused about Bioplastics?”.

[28] Plastisphere, “Confused about Bioplastics?”.

[29] Plastisphere, “Confused about Bioplastics?”.

[30] Plastisphere, “Confused about Bioplastics?”.

[31] Plastisphere, “Confused about Bioplastics?”.

[32] Plastisphere, “Confused about Bioplastics?”.

Episode 28 and 32 - Art, Artists, and COVID-19

In this series, Kristen and Kyla talked to artists about the impact of COVID-19 on their work.

Where to Find Our Guests

Recorded in May:
Nisha Patel: Moon Jelly House, Patreon, Twitter, Instagram
Lydia Hall
Lisa Buchfink

Recorded in June:
Brad Fehr

Recorded in July:
Panthea Vatandoost: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Medusa Theatre Society: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook
Jagen Johnson: Twitter, Instagram

Kristen’s Preparatory Notes for the Interview with Nisha Patel

Employment, Income

What are some of the major challenges that artists are facing during the COVID-19 pandemic?

Can you explain for us how arts funding generally works? What are some of the ways that artists make money in non-pandemic times?

We know that artists have been particularly affected by the loss of employment due to COVID-19. A survey found that 95% of American artists have lost income as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Canadian artists and arts workers lost an average of $24,000 in March and April. Artists are some of the most financially insecure workers in the country. The average salary is $28,000, which is well below the Canadian average. Artists are also much more likely to be self-employed, which makes them more vulnerable to shocks like this. Productions are shut down, galleries are closed, workshops aren’t happening.  

Lydia, an actress in the UK: “Everything has stopped. COVID has really messed the arts over right now”. “I worry that there will be no industry to go back to.” Do you see this as a short-term problem or is it something that will continue for years or maybe even permanently?

The economic impact of cultural products is an estimated $53.1 billion, or 2.7% of GDP in Canada. Art, of course, can’t be reduced to a dollar figure but that does demonstrate how important art is to our society. An estimated 700,000 people work in the arts and culture sector in Canada.

Have grant programs and things like that been affected by the pandemic, or is that mostly stable?

As someone who works primarily in a print medium, do you feel like poets are less affected by COVID-19?

Are there any kinds of artists that you think are being affected particularly profoundly, or conversely that have been affected less acutely, by the pandemic?

What are some of the ways that artists are adapting to this new reality? Is there anything about that that excites you?

Losing Art

In the UK, there is a risk of total collapse for theatres. An estimated 70% of performing arts companies may close by Christmas without government support. That includes the famous Globe theatre.

In Canada there has been something of a rescue package for the culture, arts, and sport sector – $500 million funding Emergency Support Fund for Culture, Heritage, and Sport Organizations, which includes $55 million to the Canada Council for the Arts – but even so there is a considerable risk to the sector. The Canada Council for the Arts did a survey in April which found that 39% of artists need help beyond the two general economic assistance packages, the CERB and the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy. 

I guess my question is this: do you think we stand at risk of losing certain kinds of art as a result of the pandemic?

Is the Canadian government rescue package adequate, or is more needed?

What about the risk that governments might cut future art funding as they try to deal with the budgetary crises that this pandemic is causing? Do you have any suggestions on how people can try to keep arts funding in their communities? 

Changes to Art

How has your art changed since the pandemic started? You’ve been doing more visual art recently. Is that because of the pandemic or is it a coincidence?

Billy Eilish recently said that she “wrote a whole new song” in quarantine, which sparked some discussion online about the pandemic and pressure to create. Do you think that’s something that a lot of artists are feeling right now? Are you feeling a pressure to create, and how do you deal with that?

Artists are also facing pressures to digitize their work. Is that a good thing? What are some of the risks?

Pandemic is also slowing life down a bit: it is giving people time to stop and to do some introspection. Has that change of pace shaped your art?

Prep Questions Sent to Lydia Hall, Lisa Buchfink, Brad Fehr, Panthea Vatandoost, and Jagen Johnson

Tell us a bit about how the pandemic is affecting you and your work. You can interpret this however you want but we’ll include a few suggestions about the kinds of impacts that we think the audience might want to hear about. 

• How are you working now? Is it different? 

• How are you making a living now? Is it different? 

• What kind of art are you making? Are the media, themes, and techniques different? Is it harder to work right now, or is the pandemic giving you lots of ideas? 

• What about the people that benefit from your work? Are they different, or experiencing your art differently, right now? Are you making more use of virtual platforms? 

• Are there any programs that have helped you through the pandemic? These could be government programs, but they don’t have to be. If you have opinions on what more needs to be done or what has been most helpful, you can talk about this!

Tell us how you think art might change as a result of the pandemic. You can interpret this however you want. 

Give listeners a call to action, if you want. Is there anything you think listeners should do to support artists right now, or in general?

Check out our other episodes on COVID-19:
Kristen and Kyla React to COVID-19
COVID-19 and Inequality with Alix Jansen
Ten Unexpected Effects of COVID-19
COVID-19, Wildfires, and the Climate Crisis

Episodes 26, 27 and 29 - Palm Oil

What is Palm Oil?

Palm oil comes from the fruit of oil palm trees (elaeis guineensis). Palm kernel oil comes from crushing the kernel (the stone in the middle of the fruit). 66 million tons of palm oil is produced annually, making it the most commonly produced vegetable oil. Global production of palm oil has doubled in the last decade. Palm oil plantations cover more than 27 million hectares of the Earth’s surface.

There are approximately 200 alternate names for palm oil and palm oil derivatives used in cleaning products and cosmetics, which can make it really difficult to know if there is palm oil in what you’re buying.[1]

But here’s a trick: there are four root words that give you an indication that an ingredient might be palm oil-derived (but not necessarily so):

Palm-

• Palm kernel oil

• Palm fruit oil

• Palmate

• Palmolein

• Palmitate

• Palmitic acid

• Palmityl alcohol

• Hydrated palm glycerines

• Etyl palmitate

Stear-

• Sodium stearate

• Stearic acid

• Pentataerythrityl tetraisostearate

• Octyldodecyl stearoyl stearate

Laur-

• Sodium lauryl lactylate

• Sodiul lauryl sulphate

• Sodium laureth sulfare

Glyc-

• Glyceryl

• Hydrogenated palm glycerides

But there are a bunch of palm derivatives that don’t use these roots (e.g., sodium kernelate, elaeis guineensis) and sometimes palm oil can be labelled more generically, as vegetable fat or vegetable oil. Here is a list of 25 sneaky names for palm oil. If you live in an EU country, palm oil can’t be labelled as a generic vegetable oil.[2]

More than 50% of packaged supermarket products contain palm oil. Palm oil is in:

• Packaged foods like pizza (dough), doughnuts, chocolate, margarine, noodles, ice cream, bread, chips, cookies. It’s used where you need fat of some kind.

• Personal care products and cosmetics like deodorant, shampoo, toothpaste, and lipstick. Some cleaning products also.

• Animal feed

• Biofuels

It is also a popular cooking oil in Asian and African countries. 40% of the world’s palm oil is consumed in China, India, and Pakistan.[3] The food industry used about 72% of all palm oil, cosmetics/cleaning take another 18%, and the remaining 10% goes to biofuels and animal feed.[4]

Why is Palm Oil in Everything?

Palm oil has a lot of useful properties. It is semi-solid at room temperature, so it can keep spreads spreadable. It is resistant to oxidation, so it can give products a longer shelf-life. It is stable at high temperatures, so it helps give fried products a crispy and crunchy texture. And it is odorless and colourless, so it doesn’t alter the look or smell of food products. 

Palm oil is also used in some products for its health properties. Palm oil doesn’t have trans-fat and has a lower saturated fat concentration than butter. Other vegetable oils have to be partially hydrogenated to make them more solid, but that process of artificial hydrogenation creates trans-fatty acids.[5] Palm oil is naturally hydrogenated. When scientific consensus was forming around trans-fats, Unilever led the shift to palm oil in food products. 

Palm oil and palm oil derivatives also replaced animal-based fats in foods, as well as cleaning and personal care products (E.g., soaps with animal tallow[6]). Palm oil and palm kernel oil possessed the same properties as animal tallow, which made them the only suitable plant-based alternative.[7] Consumers were already pushing the market toward plant-based alternatives, but the BSE outbreaks in the late 1980s and early 1990s triggered a larger shift toward palm oil.[8] The consumption of animal fats per capita reached its peak in the 1980s and has been in decline since.

Palm oil is also cheap because it’s a productive crop and because oil palm trees demand less work and production inputs than other oil crops. For that reason, it is a popular cooking oil in Asian and African countries.

Where is Palm Oil Produced?

Oil palm trees are native to West Africa but were brought to Southeast Asia in the 19th century. Malaysia and Indonesia produce 87% of global palm oil. However, there are 42 other countries that also produce palm oil. That includes countries in West and Central Africa, Southeast Asia, and Central and tropical South America.[9]

Palm Oil Production

Oil palms are grown and harvested on large-, medium-, and small-scale palm oil plantations.[10] The palm oil industry is dominated by about a dozen corporations that operate large-scale plantations and mills.[11] The three largest players – Musim Mas, Wilma, and Sime Darby, account for 25% of palm oil production.[12] (While these are big multinationals, they are small in comparison to the biggest agribusiness corporations, the “ABCDs”, which are headquartered in western countries). There are at least a million small-scale oil palm producers in Indonesia alone.[13]

Oil palm trees grow up to 20 metres tall and have an average life span of 25 years. They start to bear fruit after three years and reach peak production between years 6-8. Fruit bunches can contain from 1-3,000 individual fruits, which are the size of small plums. The bunches weigh 10-25kg. Harvesting palm fruit is physically demanding. Harvesters use long steel poles with a sickle at the end to cut the palm fruit bunches down. The bunches are then loaded onto wheelbarrows and taken to collection points.

Like sugarcane, oil palm fruit has to be processed quickly after harvesting – within 24 hours. For this reason, palm oil refineries are usually situated within-country. 

Environment

Deforestation

Palm oil is a major driver of deforestation. For instance, approximately 55% of newly developed palm oil plantations in Malaysia and Indonesia from 1990-2005 resulted in deforestation.[14] As the palm oil industry expands, the space for new palm oil plantations is often made through deforestation and peatland clearing.

Palm oil is currently responsible for about 8% of deforestation – that’s a big chunk of the 53% of deforestation caused by agriculture. But keep in mind that 24% of deforestation is from land used for livestock, while 19% is coming from soybeans (which are mostly going to feed animals) and 11% from corn (same). So, if we are looking at changing one consumption practice to counter deforestation, palm oil isn’t the place to start.

And even in the big palm oil producing countries like Indonesia, land clearing for pulp, paper, and timber is a bigger source of deforestation.

However, the forests that are being cleared for palm oil plantations are in some cases particularly biodiverse or particularly efficient carbon sinks. Indonesian forests store even more carbon per hectare than the Brazilian Amazon. Some Indonesian forests are called “peatlands”, which are low-lying rainforests located close to coastal areas. The peat is under the forest, and it is basically a below-ground accumulation of decayed vegetation. It was formed in swampy conditions where plant material fails to fully decay and can build up to a depth of 10 metres or more over thousands of years.

The peat lands are an immense source of stored carbon. They can store up to 20 times as much carbon as tropical rainforests on normal mineral soils. As the forests above them are deforested, those sinks are released – making for something some have called a “carbon time-bomb”. Also, as the industry expands there is concern that its impact on deforestation could increase.

And palm oil could be less destructive. Deforestation could be reduced or avoided by planting in areas that are already deforested.

Biodiversity Loss

This problem is connected to the problem of deforestation and other land conversion for palm oil plantations.  Palm oil expansion could affect 54% of threatened mammals and 64% of threatened birds globally.

Some of the species threatened by palm oil expansion include the cotton top monkey, the chimpanzee, Sumatran tigers, African forest elephants, orangutans, gibbons, sun bears, kangaroos, and cassowaries. For example, 10,000 of the estimated 75-100,000 critically endangered Bornean orangutans are currently found in areas allocated to palm oil.

In addition to the loss of direct habitat, palm oil plantations can increase human-wildlife conflict with species like orangutans and tigers. Each year 750-1,250 orangutans are killed during human-orangutan conflicts, often linked to expanding agriculture.

A Jakarta-based ecologist has referred to palm oil plantations as “green deserts” because they are monocultures. While these are plants, palm plantations in Southeast Asia are an introduced species that does not interact very well with local ecology, so very little biodiversity exists within them.

Unfortunately, boycotting palm oil is likely to displace rather than halt biodiversity loss because it would increase the production of other oil crops. So the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and WWF prefer to push for palm oil sustainability, rather than a boycott or ban of palm oil.

Sustainable palm oil would involve putting an end to the clearing of native tropical forests for new palm oil plantations, and limit demand for palm oil for non-food uses. It would also ask existing palm oil plantations to manage their land responsibly by setting aside forest and other areas identified as important for biodiversity and carbon.

Climate Change

Oil palms are a very productive plant. One of the reasons it was produced initially was environmental sustainability: because palm oil is so productive, you need less land to grow it.

Source: WWF

The problem here is land conversion. Forests and peat lands are carbon sinks. When these lands are converted to palm oil plantations, it results in the release of greenhouse gases. As well, we lose those carbon sinks. Indonesia’s peatlands have gone from a carbon sink to a globally significant source of emissions thanks to deforestation. Oil palms do absorb carbon dioxide, but less effectively than forests.

Also, fire is used to clear lands for palm oil plantations, which emits GHG in addition to creating air pollution. 80% of the fires in Indonesia in 2019 were being set to clear land for palm oil plantations.

The challenging thing here is that oil palm production is more productive than substitute crops. And substitutes like coconut oil have their own environmental problems. We would likely have to convert even more land to keep up with demand.

Chemicals Use and Pollution

Palm oil plantations use a range of pesticides and herbicides, as well as large amounts of fertiliser. These products can pollute soil and groundwater. Although palm oil plantations aren’t large users of pesticides and fertilizers overall, these chemicals are often used indiscriminately – which can result in water pollution.

These chemicals also pose a risk to the people working on palm oil plantations. One herbicide used on palm oil plantations is paraquat dichloride. Paraquat is a highly toxic chemical, and for that reason is banned in the EU as well as several other countries. In Indonesia it is a restricted substance. Amnesty International found evidence of the use of paraquat on Indonesian plantations, as well as the absence of training and sufficient personal protective equipment. Workers described negative health effects after exposure to the chemicals. Palm oil mills also pollute, producing 2.5 metric tons of effluent for every metric ton of palm oil it produces.

People

Oil palms are one of the most profitable crops for farmers, which in part is a success story: palm oil has helped to reduce rural poverty in places like Indonesia, for example. Palm oil has the potential to improve incomes and employment where it is produced. Millions of smallholders rely on palm oil for their livelihoods in Malaysia and Indonesia.

On the other hand, the oil palm industry can sometimes hurt communities economically because they lose access to forests and it may not be compensated sufficiently by economic gains from cultivating oil palms.

Working Conditions

Amnesty International has reported on the labour abuses on palm oil plantations. Specifically, they looked at plantations in Indonesia linked to Wilmar, the largest processor and merchandiser of palm oils (they control 43% of the global palm oil trade).

On those plantations, Amnesty International found evidence of forced and child labour, gender discrimination, as well as exploitative and dangerous working conditions.

Amnesty concluded that these are not isolated incidents, but rather linked to the systemic business practices of Wilmar and its subsidiaries and suppliers, such as the low level of wages, use of targets and “piece rates” (workers are paid based on tasks completed rather than hours worked), and a complex system of financial and other penalties. Because of these systems, workers that do not meet their targets get their already low salaries deducted.

Targets are set by individual companies and “appear to be set arbitrarily to meet companies’ needs rather than being based on a realistic calculation of how much workers can do in their working hours.” Because of the targeting system, workers on the plantations get help from their spouses, children, and others to complete tasks. Amnesty documented evidence of the involvement of children in hazardous tasks, which is illegal under Indonesian law, on plantations owned by two Wilmar subsidiaries and three Wilmar suppliers. Some were as young as eight.

Amnesty found that workers, especially women, are employed under casual work arrangements which make them vulnerable to abuse. While most harvesters (always men) are employed on permanent employment contracts, most plant maintenance employees are women and are employed on a casual basis.

Employers can penalize workers for failing to meet targets or for mistakes in their work (e.g. picking unripe fruit). This penalty usually has a financial dimension. These penalties are not transparent, which allows employers to exact work under the threat of loss of pay or employment. Amnesty International has documented instances of this, which it considers to constitute forced labour. 

Indigenous Peoples and Nearby Communities

Indigenous peoples are losing their land to palm oil plantations. This is especially a problem in Indonesia. Land use rights in Indonesia are often disputed due to conflicts between customary land rights and formal property ownership.[15] Weak laws, poor government oversight, and the failure of palm producing companies to fulfil their human rights responsibilities have led to a loss of land and livelihood opportunities for Indigenous people in Indonesia, according to Human Rights Watch. Companies have failed to consult with Indigenous peoples and to provide just and fair compensation for losses suffered.

In some cases, Indigenous peoples are forcefully removed from their lands, which is one reason that the Rainforest Action Network has used the term “conflict palm oil” to describe the industry. Private armies and paramilitary groups are deployed sometimes, and community members have been killed in Indonesia. There are upwards of 600 ongoing land disputes between palm oil companies and rural communities.

Surrounding communities can also be made more at risk of flooding when palm plants are placed on steep slopes, causing soil erosion.

Food Security

Another problem with the conversion of agricultural lands for palm oil production is that it can hurt local food security (same with all cash crops).[16] And because palm oil is increasingly being used for biofuel, prices are increasing which can sometimes make it unaffordable for communities proximate to these plantations.[17]

Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil

What is it?

The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) is a sustainable palm oil certification that was founded in 2004. Like the Marine Stewardship Council, RSPO was founded through a collaboration between the World Wildlife Fund and Unilever, as well as Asian producers and a few other Western brands (e.g. Nestlé, Tesco, Cargill).[18] It has managed sustainability standards for palm oil production since 2008.[19] An estimated 14% of palm oil is RSPO certified.

The backbone of the RSPO standard is a generic set of Principles and Criteria adopted in 2005.[20] There are eight core Principles:

• Commitment to transparency,

• Compliance with applicable laws and regulations,

• Commitment to long-term economic and financial viability,

• Use of appropriate best practices by growers and millers,

• Environmental responsibility and conservation of natural resources and biodiversity,

• Responsible consideration of employees, smallholders, and other individual communities affected by growers and mills,

• Responsible development of new plantings, and

• Commitment to continuous improvement.[21]

Each of the eight principles has corresponding criteria, which can also differ from country-to-country and location-to-location.[22] RSPO creates standards for the growth of oil palms as well as the palm oil milling process.[23] It also has standards for tracing palm oil through the supply chain (which is called chain-of-custody certification).[24]

There are also separate standards for smallholder palm farmers. That was introduced a bit later than the main standard, and it responds to the challenges that small producers can have in obtaining sustainability certifications.[25] Basically, the idea is to ask smallholders to make improvements over time, rather than asking them to do everything before obtaining certification. That program was just introduced in 2019, so it isn’t clear how well it will work.

RSPO is the largest and by many accounts the most robust palm oil certification available, but it has still been widely criticized.

Criticisms

RSPO is a multi-stakeholder organization (meaning there are different voices involved in defining standards). The seven groups of stakeholders included in the RSPO’s general assembly are: palm oil growers, palm oil processors and/or traders, consumer goods manufacturers, retailers, banks and investors, environmental and nature conservation NGOs, and social development NGOs.[26]

However, RSPO has been criticized for being industry-dominated and for failing to engage key vulnerable stakeholders, such as smallholding producers, labour unions, social and environmental groups, indigenous peoples and organizations, and women’s groups.[27]For instance, only a small proportion of palm oil-related land use conflicts are sufficiently acknowledged and resolved within RSPO’s institutional dispute resolution mechanisms.[28]

Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, and other NGOs have criticized RSPO for the low stringency of compliance enforcement.[29] For instance, Amnesty International concluded that “the RSPO is acting as a shield which deflects greater scrutiny of Wilmar’s and other companies’ practices.”

Also, the majority of certified palm oil is mixed with conventional oil during transportation and as a result consumer products with the RSPO logo will most likely contain unsustainable palm oil.

Another argument is that the RSPO standard gives national governments an excuse to forego further public regulation of the industry.[30]

Critics also point to weaknesses in the standards themselves. RSPO initially avoided defining what sustainability means, going forward with the standard first.[31] RSPO’s emphasis on consensus decision-making, critics say, makes it incapable of dealing with contentious or controversial issues.[32] Even the moderate stringency of RSPO’s standards have led major stakeholders to leave.[33] 

Although RSPO has devoted some attention to the issue, it is still difficult for smallholder palm producers to afford certification.[34] And small- and medium-sized producers have less of an incentive to get RSPO certified because they often supply Indian, Chinese, and Pakistani markets[35]

Kristen mentioned a book chapter that looks at the role of auditors in sustainability labelling. The book is called Transnational Business Governance Interactions.

Why is Certification Uptake so Low?

Most sustainability labels deal with agricultural products for which there is a specific consumer product with a recognizable link to the agricultural product – e.g., coffee, paper, sugar, cocoa, fish.[36] That isn’t the case for palm oil.

That makes it much more difficult to get companies to sign onto voluntary standards for palm oil. Consumers mostly don’t know that there is palm oil in a product. Producers mostly don’t want to emphasize that there is palm oil in their items, since it has baggage and is not the major ingredient. That makes it more difficult to develop a price premium for certified palm oil. And that problem is compounded because even companies like Unilever that might use RSPO certified palm oil are not necessarily going to put the label on, say, their peanut butter because they want to emphasize the primary ingredients instead.

Another challenge is palm oil’s position in the market. Because it is mostly used as a cheap additive, producers mostly do not want to take on the increased cost and because there may not be much potential to charge a price premium. That problem is compounded because so much of the palm oil market is from non-wealthy countries, and there is very little consumer demand for sustainability labelling there.

Boycott v. Sustainability Certification

Palm oil mainly ubiquitous because it is cheap. And there are no real alternatives that wouldn’t cause problems. So:

What Can You Do?

Social and Environmental Labels

Assuming that you aren’t going to go palm oil-free: the RSPO is better than nothing, but it’s not great.

The WWF has a palm oil buyers scorecard where you can search brands for information about whether they are RSPO members or not (though again RSPO is flawed). It only has a few brands, though.

Rainforest Action Network recommends looking for the Palm Oil Innovation Group (POIG) standard, which they see as the only standard truly free of deforestation, peatland destruction, and exploitation. All POIG retailers and manufacturers are RSPO members, and must be certified – so it’s basically a stronger version of RSPO. POIG doesn’t have many certified products right now, but it might be the solution of the future. Some noteworthy POIG members include: Danone, L’Oréal, and Barry Callebaut. POIG NGOs include: WWF, Greenpeace, RAN, Verité (fair labour group), Sumatran Orangutan Society, and Orangutan Land Trust.

For workers’ rights, try the RSPO Smallholder Standard (although this might mean weaker sustainability standards). Another option is FairPalm.

Fairtrade hasn’t created standards for palm oil yet, but there is one available label that is substantively like fairtrade: FairPalm is a label for palm oil grown by smallholders in West Africa.

Or try doubling up with organic labels – which can at least address the harmful chemicals problem. Organic labels deal with the use of pesticides and fertilizers, so on their own they cannot address the other problems with palm oil. Unfortunately, RSPO is the best we have on that.

Ethical Consumer Worst and Best Ratings

Ethical Consumer has put together a list of brands to avoid (received their “worst” rating on palm oil use). Here are some of the brands that I recognized from that list:

• Nestlé – Kit Kat, NESCAFÉ, Perrier

• Mondelez – Cadbury

• Domino’s Pizza

• Yum! Brands – Pizza Hut, KFC

• Subway

• Itsu

• Prêt-à-manger

• TGI Friday’s

• Pizza Express

• L’Occitane

• Proctor and Gamble – Pampers, Head and Shoulders 

Ethical consumer also has a list of recommended brands (received their “best” rating on palm oil use). I only recognized a few brands from this list:

• Marks and Spencer

• Waitrose

• Lush

• Nivea

• Georganics

Get Involved!

Get involved with campaigns asking companies to implement sustainable palm oil practices. Write to companies to get them to use sustainable palm oil. Find out more about Michelle Desilets by following her on twitter.

Endnotes

[1] Ethical Consumer Podcast. (2018). Complex World of Palm Oil. Ethical Consumer.

[2] Paiement, Phillip. (2017). Transnational Sustainability Laws. New York: Cambridge University Press.

[3] The Food Chain Podcast. (2019). Can Palm Oil Be Sustainable? BBC World Service.

[4] Ethical Consumer Podcast, “Complex World of Palm Oil”.

[5] Ethical Consumer Podcast, “Complex World of Palm Oil”.

[6] Audio Long Reads. (2019). How the World Got Hooked on Palm Oil. The Guardian.

[7] Audio Long Reads, “How the World Got Hooked on Palm Oil.”

[8] Audio Long Reads, “How the World Got Hooked on Palm Oil.”

[9] Paiement, Transnational Sustainability Laws.

[10] Paiement, Transnational Sustainability Laws.

[11] Paiement, Transnational Sustainability Laws.

[12] Paiement, Transnational Sustainability Laws.

[13] Paiement, Transnational Sustainability Laws.

[14] Paiement, Transnational Sustainability Laws.

[15] Paiement, Transnational Sustainability Laws.

[16] Paiement, Transnational Sustainability Laws.

[17] Paiement, Transnational Sustainability Laws.

[18] Paiement, Transnational Sustainability Laws.

[19] Paiement, Transnational Sustainability Laws.

[20] Paiement, Transnational Sustainability Laws.

[21] Paiement, Transnational Sustainability Laws.

[22] Paiement, Transnational Sustainability Laws.

[23] Paiement, Transnational Sustainability Laws.

[24] Paiement, Transnational Sustainability Laws.

[25] Paiement, Transnational Sustainability Laws.

[26] Paiement, Transnational Sustainability Laws.

[27] Paiement, Transnational Sustainability Laws.

[28] Paiement, Transnational Sustainability Laws.

[29] Paiement, Transnational Sustainability Laws.

[30] Paiement, Transnational Sustainability Laws.

[31] Paiement, Transnational Sustainability Laws.

[32] Paiement, Transnational Sustainability Laws.

[33] Paiement, Transnational Sustainability Laws.

[34] Paiement, Transnational Sustainability Laws.

[35] Paiement, Transnational Sustainability Laws.

[36] Paiement, Transnational Sustainability Laws.