Haiku #1

quiet misty morning

on a lawn unfrozen

wrapper snuggles leaf

Guest blog #7: Adrianna Bojrab Unplugged

"There is one foe we all have in common, utility bills.  The (groan) we-just-paid-the-last-bill time of the month when we are put in check, again, for how much energy and money we waste on utilities - mindless shelling out of money on necessary but over-abused resources.  In the college town of Ann Arbor, MI, we feel the wrath of the cold early in the year, forcing us to raise the temperature on our thermostat. However after two months of growing agitation of our mounting bills, my housemates decided to unplug.  Even when a machine is turned off, but plugged in, energy is being wasted. And so our unplugging movement began.  I began to notice the microwave unplugged when not in use, and so the next time I saw the microwave plugged in but not being used, I nonchalantly pulled the plug.  This caught on quickly between my six roommates and I, yet was never spoken about. ‘Unplugging’ began as someone’s intent to diffuse our high monthly bills but caught on like an obsessive game.  What else could we unplug?  Our game moved from the kitchen to the blow dryers in the bathroom, and spread to the lamps in the living room, even creeping into the television and cell phone charger in my own bedroom. It became second nature.  We continued our little game throughout the month, and were shocked by how much our utility bills decreased.  By trying to reduce our bills each month, we can find an incentive to save energy.  Whether you’re in it for the reduction of your bills or saving energy, you will find that by decreasing your energy use, you are benefiting your world, and even your life." 

~Adrianna

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Waste and trash don't only apply to physical, macro-scale objects. They can also apply to electrons and cotton fiber paper that is green and white. I like the title she chose...unplugged...makes it sound all media-esque.

Themes

I spent a little while today organising my posts into theme areas - I have added a new page to the top. This will hopefully help me and you keep track of what I've been writing about, and also help you quickly access posts with certain themes. I am sure I could have done a better job. Let me know if you like this idea, or if I should change it.

The effectiveness of boycotting - point/counter-point

Back to boycotts. As I mentioned previously, it seems like boycotting trash means boycotting consumption, which means, in a way, boycotting popular culture and trends. It means much more than just boycotting some company because I don't like how they treat their employees. Many people have asked me whether what I am doing can make a big difference. Probably not, but I am sure that at least come people have been affected by it, hopefully positively. I wonder if you have any thoughts on how to measure "success" of this boycott. Let me know. But for now, I would like to present a point/counter-point on the effectiveness of boycotts. The match up: Geov Parrish (Seattle Weekly News) vs. Todd Putnam (a guy that wrote a response to Parrish's article on democracycellproject.net)

First up, some passages from Parrish: 

The Futility of Boycotts  

Planning to boycott Microsoft? Get in line.

The flamboyant pastor of the Eastside's enormous Antioch Bible Church, Ken Hutcherson, has announced a nationwide boycott of multiple corporations. Microsoft, Boeing, Hewlett-Packard, and Nike are among the companies that signed a letter this month supporting a statewide gay-civil-rights bill, legislation that conservative Christians virulently oppose. Hutcherson says he is launching a boycott campaign targeting the letter's signers.

I'm glad that progressives aren't the only people who waste their time with this crap.

...

Boycotts can be successful. But it's very, very rare. For every success story—grapes, Nestle, South Africa—there are many thousands of failures.

...

Political activists of all stripes are often eager to find a handle with which to influence the perceived sociopathic actions of big corporations. The problem is that when you target a company as large as Microsoft or Boeing—both of which have earnings greater than most of the world's countries—even if their retail products can be boycotted easily, it's virtually impossible to imagine a circumstance in which enough people join the boycott to cause a perceptible drop in earnings. Even then, unless participants tell the company what they're doing (which most don't), sales fluctuations can and usually are attributed to a thousand other factors first.

...

Boycotts are almost always a waste of time. So, alas, are minority shareholder resolutions. Corporations are not democratic institutions, and by definition, they do not have a social conscience. They exist solely to make money for their owners or shareholders, and they spend far more polishing their image than any boycott campaign does tarnishing it.

It's fine and well to shun a product or company because of dislike for the company's policies...But don't expect to influence the company's behavior.

This is why the growing economic and political power of big global corporations is so dangerous. With government, there's not much accountability, but at least there's a little. By contrast, the number of times big companies have been held accountable by ordinary consumers for social policies can be counted on two hands. And even then, after the campaign closes up shop, the behavior often resumes.

This is why, noxious as it is, for left, right, or center the only institution powerful enough to consistently influence corporate behavior is government. That's one of the reasons corporations work so hard to influence governments.

What can ordinary consumers do? Buy local. Get involved in the political process. Create alternative institutions. By all means, use your hard-earned money to patronize big companies only when you want to support them. It'll make you feel better.

But usually, they won't feel a thing.

And now in response, Putnam.

 

Geov Parrish’s speculation that for every boycott success there are many thousands of failures is a baseless, ridiculous and an irresponsible assertion. During the 10 years that I tracked boycotts for the National Boycott News, it wasn’t one in a thousand boycotts that succeeded; it was more like one in two. Of course, in those days boycotts tended to be launched by organizations. Today with the internet in full swing, anybody can simply post their call for a boycott. And they do, by the hundreds.
 

...Geov states that boycotts are almost always a waste of time. I think it would be more accurate to say that with boycotts, what you get out of them tends to correspond to what you put into them. Nobody can really expect Microsoft to stop its donations to Republican politicians because a handful of webpages has endorsed a call to boycott Microsoft for its past donations to Bush. It obviously takes much more than that. Successful boycotts require campaigns, strategic planning, coalition-building, persistence and patience.

Contrary to Geov’s assertion, that more than a dozen boycotts he listed had “absolutely no effect”, in fact, some of the cited companies (McDonalds, Shell, Starbucks, Mitsubishi) gave in and met boycotters’ demands, while others on Geov’s list suffered notable economic repercussions...

By the early 1990s, about half of all boycotts eventually succeeded at getting the primary changes they were demanding from the targeted corporations. For serious boycott campaigns, I doubt this ratio has changed much.

Boycott failures can’t simply be blamed on the tactic of boycotting, but rather, other factors such as message clarity and simplicity, the level of public interest or sympathy, creative and effective publicity, media coverage, and the availability of comparable substitute products are all critical factors in determining the success or failure of a boycott.

Also, boycotts have proven an excellent way to help educate and involve the public about issues –particularly because people are slow to inform themselves about issues where they have no impact. Instead of sounding like whiners, boycotters top off their complaint with action –not buying a product, which in itself can feel empowering and thereby lead to an increased level of personal involvement.

As corporations have grown evermore enormous the strategy for boycotting them has also evolved. Instead of being fixated on the company’s bloated bottom-line, sophisticated boycotts target the all-important corporate image as a means of exerting leverage. These days, most smart corporations settle long before they begin to feel the pinch in sales. They simply look to see which way the trend seems to be moving, and if it looks as if over time their image might suffer from a particular campaign, they take steps to settle before much harm can be done. Protracted boycott standoffs against Nestle and Coors in the 1980s did such lasting damage to the companies’ images that now most companies don’t wait until their image begins to get tarnished. After only 2 years, Heinz sat down with boycott organizers to discuss how it could avoid becoming forever labeled the “dolphin-killing” company, and quickly implemented measures and verification to make its Star-Kist brand tuna –and all other Heinz foods-- the first major brand to be certified as “dolphin safe.” As a result, Chicken of the Sea and Bumble Bee, feeling vulnerable, quickly followed suit.

Heinz had guessed the change to dolphin-safe would cost them a nickel on each can of tuna. But even when their polling indicated that the public was only willing to pay two cents more for a “dolphin-safe” brand, they saw the trend moving in that direction and took proactive steps to stop any more negative publicity.

...I utterly disagree with his view that the government is the best and proper arena for dealing with issues of corporate behavior. Boycotts have historically served as an important tactic when political options proved fruitless or were nonexistent. The numbers of boycotts exploded in the 1980s during the Reagan years, when there was no way to get government to address corporate behavior. Growing frustration and cynicism with government led groups to go directly to the public to address social issues and corporate misbehavior. (During that same period, boycotts began succeeding in greater numbers and in less time than ever before.) In the years since, government has only grown less responsive.

Ironically, I’ve found that when you complain to corporations about their behavior, in addition to extolling their many virtues they typically tell you that they are not the appropriate target for such concerns, and to instead contact your government representatives.

...
In an often-cited survey of business leaders, boycotts ranked at the top as a major headache for a corporation; even a greater concern than class action lawsuits.

The greatest drawback of boycotting is pervasive myth that it is ineffective. By badmouthing boycotts, Geov has done the corporations’ work for them.

 

The Self-Repair Manifesto and proxies

I have written a few times (here, here and here) on the notion of proxies, i.e. how we manage to have other people do for us many of the things that either we should know to do ourselves (What does it take to grow the food we eat? What does it take to mend a torn shirt?), or how we manage to have other people take care of things in such a way that we lose sensitivity to them (Where does our trash go? What happens to it?). What ends up happening is that we lose control over things that should be under our control, because the people and entities we give proxies to (many times) don't make decisions for our (and our planet's) well-being. They make decisions for their well-being (Who thought it would be a good idea to plant monocultures? Why can't we stop other people's trash coming into our backyards?). It is time to take back these proxies, so that we can live knowing confidently that no carcinogenic chemicals are applied to our foods and that no e-waste has to dealt with by poor people.

One way of doing this is knowing how to fix things ourselves. Indeed, if we know how to fix things, we don't have to rely on mechanics and companies to do the jobs for us, with at times exorbitant costs that make it cheaper (monetarily) in some sense to buy a new item. Arnab introduced me to the Self-Repair Manifesto, which is a free repair manual anyone can edit. There are instructions on how to repair computers, game consoles, phones, vehicles, cameras, and household appliances. Here is what the website says:

• Repair is better than recycling - making our things last longer is both more efficient and more cost-effective than mining them from raw materials.
• Repair saves the planet - Earth has limited resources and we can't run a linear manufacturing process forever. The best way to be efficient is to reuse what we already have!
• Repair saves you money - fixing things is often free, and usually cheaper than replacing them. Doing the repair yourself saves you serious dough.
• Repair teaches engineering - the best way to find out how something works is to take it apart.
• If you can't fix it, you don't own it - repair connects people with devices, creating bonds that transcend consumption. Self-repair is sustainable.

The point of this Manifesto is self-empowerment and encouragement. We can do things ourselves, avoiding waste and trash and environmental and social harm. Furthermore, as the last bullet item states, investing in something connects you to it, and makes it less likely that you will trash something, which may increase in value to you the more you invest in it. (Lia will be writing more about this soon - objects, sentimentality and trash.) 

(close to) no trash fashion

I met Stephanie Thompson around two and a half years ago at the Shadow Art Fair at the Corner Brewery in Ypsilanti (Arbor Brewing Company's sister beerhouse, where they do the actual brewing of the beer.). She runs her own clothing and accessories line, Always the Forest, which she has been doing since high school. Super cute stuff. She mentions at the bottom of each design whether or not the piece is made from recycled materials or not. Here is what her website says:

"Stephanie has been designing her own clothing since high school, and has decided to take her passion for fabrics and sewing to another level with Always the Forest. She is in charge of finding the fabric, designing the clothing, drafting the patterns, and sewing them up! The designs incorporate both comfort and style, while her attention to the detail of each one ensures a well-made garment. She tries to recycle fabric as often as she can, so that means your garment will be made of high quality material from an estate sale, her grandma's basement, or remnants from other designers."

No trash doesn't mean no creativity or novelty.

How we undervalue

I am taking a break from writing about boycotts to make sure I can capture in words some fleeting thoughts. Much of what I have been writing about over the past eight months has been about value - how we value objects that have embodied in them tremendous amounts of effort and resources, how we value the resources that provide us the capacity to make these objects, and how we value social interactions (here, here, here, here for starters). Trash lies at the heart of each of these valuations; indeed, trash is the result of our undervaluation of these things. An undervaluation of these things allows us the liberty to treat people and nature as we please, without care and respect.

We have a tendency, almost a knack, to undervalue almost everything that surrounds us - people, place, object, and nature. We undervalue the kindness and love of our parents, we undervalue the smile and eye contact of people we walk blindly by, we undervalue the beauty of a snowy morning, and we undervalue an untamed river. We think of everything in the world as fungible, people included (That is why people deem it fit to kill other people or put other people in harms way, especially in conflict. To such people, a person is just a person, and there is nothing more to him. Not all of the experiences that that person has been through, or the conversations and friendships that that person has had. Nothing. Especially in conflict, people are fungible.) That's the only way we can assign monetary value to all of these things - a well raised child can provide $X more for our economy than one that was raised in the inner city and grew up with gangs, a snowy morning (like the one recently in Seattle) probably caused us to lose a lot of economic value (gosh, if people can't go to work, then, then, gosh, we are losing money!), a mighty river, if tamed, can provide jobs to many hundreds or thousands of people, and generate economic gain. The only reason why Transocean did such a inept job at drilling the BP-Macondo well was because they (and the government) undervalued the impact a blowout would have on the ocean, the fish, the birds, and the people of the Gulf.

 

What is the value of this fish and the water around it? (Photo by Joel Sartore from here.)

Indeed, due to the complexities of systems around us, both natural and man-made, we will never be able to assign any accurate value to anything in this world - we will continue to undervalue everything, because no one is willing to say that a life, or a river, or a rock, or an experience is priceless. What if we had the humility to not assign monetary value to something? What if the only way we could value was through observation, feeling and emotion? I must admit, at times it is overwhelming to me now to see a neatly stacked pile of plastic containers, knowing full well that within the day, they will be on their way to a landfill.

(Speaking of value, here's an article about how much of what investment bankers do is socially worthless.)