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RainyTheBusinessPerson
Metal newbie

Joined: Sat Oct 29, 2016 10:50 pm
Posts: 184
Location: Southern Hemisphere
PostPosted: Tue Jun 01, 2021 8:51 pm 
 

Somewhat recently, I found about some terrible stuff certain companies do. That quite a large amount of big companies do bad stuff on a regular basis was nothing new to me, but I had no idea how much shit I could find with just some basic digging. In particular, companies like Nestlé are responsible for some grave crimes, including child labor cocoa farms, among many other things. This made me wonder how apparently no one really talks about this, since I never knew about these, even though they have been going on for years.

I imagine it's because somehow, these news never hit the common people, and so the word doesn't get far. But if you're wondering about what I'm even talking about just look up "nestle crimes" on Google and you will find dozens of different articles about that.

I now feel more conscious about what I buy, avoiding stuff from brands I know are responsible for inhuman actions, not because I believe it will bankrupt any of these companies, that would be stupid and ingenuous, but because I don't feel like giving my money to companies like these, I don't want to endorse that, I don't want my money to go towards them.

Do any you also do anything like this? If so, how much, to extreme extents, or more loosely (I consider myself to still be on the loose end, since I'm just starting out with this, and have to still get used to it, which is basically looking up brands and see which ones have done some legitimately terrible stuff). It's particularly hard honestly, there are so many options out there, all that I have to do is see which ones are at the very least ethical.
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KrigareTjovane
Metalhead

Joined: Mon Mar 18, 2013 2:06 am
Posts: 545
Location: United States
PostPosted: Tue Jun 01, 2021 11:07 pm 
 

People drag Nestle through the mud every day all day on Reddit, so it's certainly talked about in some circles.

I do try and monitor what I buy and who I buy things from, but if I'm being honest it's both a slippery slope and a losing battle. All corporations have some dirt, it all boils down to which crimes you're willing to ignore and which bother you enough to boycott. Did you know Blue Bunny Ice Cream tried to cover up a bacterial outbreak that killed 3 people a few years ago? Scummy as fuck, won't be buying their stuff (not that I did anyways). Might be a different story if they took responsibility instead of attempting to cover it up.

Any corporation you can think of has some scum scandal in their history more than likely.

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Hexenmacht46290
Has a GED in Gamercide

Joined: Sun Jul 05, 2020 8:30 pm
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Location: United States
PostPosted: Tue Jun 01, 2021 11:21 pm 
 

People will act negative, and try to derail you with “but what about this other thing you buy?” Nonsense. Or other stupid questions. I would encourage you not to listen to them, and I would also encourage you to not think in black-and-white, all-or-nothing ways.

These people are making up excuses to not care, or acting like they’re actually better than you, for caring about nothing. If you do something, so what if it doesn’t make the biggest companies go bankrupt, or change their ways at all, you gave them less money, and more money to someone better. I know some people, on this forum, will just use whataboutism, in the form of talking about their delusional dreams of “revolution,” but I suggest not listening to them. Listen to yourself, but more importantly, educate yourself. If you want to buy the same/similar product, from someone better, are you willing to pay more money? Sometimes, I am. An illustration? I don’t use Spotify, at all, I pay for downloads from Bandcamp. I buy other products, like food and liquor, from smaller local companies, that I know have ethics. I buy some unethical products, but at least I did something.

Sometimes, you get lucky, and the more ethical product isn’t more expensive. I walk into town, to the hippie grocery store, avoid the expensive stuff, and buy bulk peanut butter, that they have a grinder for. I put it in mason jars, that they know the tare weight for, so I’m not making plastic waste. It costs about the same as big box brands of peanut butter. Some people might make fun of me, asking “you think you’re saving the planet, but really you’re not doing anything,” but I did do something. I’m not going to get the normies to stop using Spotify, or listen to true music. But I’m not giving the app money, to play butt/pop music that I hate, and drive the music industry into a race to the bottom, I will give the band money, and more T shirt and ticket money m, if I see them live.

Choose to be negative, or choose to be positive. A change is a change, something is better than nothing. If someone tells you that it’s hopeless, these are probably not the kind of people who’ve ever actually done anything worthwhile anyways.
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Opus
Metal freak

Joined: Sun Sep 22, 2002 11:06 am
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Location: Sweden
PostPosted: Wed Jun 02, 2021 4:16 pm 
 

I just keep my consumption to a bare minimum, everything I own is old. But then again, if you don't consume people will lose their jobs. All over the world. That's the way our societies are constructed.
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~Guest 1195014
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PostPosted: Wed Jun 02, 2021 4:22 pm 
 

Hexenmacht46290 wrote:
People will act negative, and try to derail you with “but what about this other thing you buy?” Nonsense. Or other stupid questions. I would encourage you not to listen to them, and I would also encourage you to not think in black-and-white, all-or-nothing ways.

These people are making up excuses to not care, or acting like they’re actually better than you, for caring about nothing. If you do something, so what if it doesn’t make the biggest companies go bankrupt, or change their ways at all, you gave them less money, and more money to someone better. I know some people, on this forum, will just use whataboutism, in the form of talking about their delusional dreams of “revolution,” but I suggest not listening to them. Listen to yourself, but more importantly, educate yourself. If you want to buy the same/similar product, from someone better, are you willing to pay more money? Sometimes, I am. An illustration? I don’t use Spotify, at all, I pay for downloads from Bandcamp. I buy other products, like food and liquor, from smaller local companies, that I know have ethics. I buy some unethical products, but at least I did something.

Sometimes, you get lucky, and the more ethical product isn’t more expensive. I walk into town, to the hippie grocery store, avoid the expensive stuff, and buy bulk peanut butter, that they have a grinder for. I put it in mason jars, that they know the tare weight for, so I’m not making plastic waste. It costs about the same as big box brands of peanut butter. Some people might make fun of me, asking “you think you’re saving the planet, but really you’re not doing anything,” but I did do something. I’m not going to get the normies to stop using Spotify, or listen to true music. But I’m not giving the app money, to play butt/pop music that I hate, and drive the music industry into a race to the bottom, I will give the band money, and more T shirt and ticket money m, if I see them live.

Choose to be negative, or choose to be positive. A change is a change, something is better than nothing. If someone tells you that it’s hopeless, these are probably not the kind of people who’ve ever actually done anything worthwhile anyways.

I'm kind of on a similar boat as you, but in the bigger picture it does look pretty pessimistic, in my opinion.

The sad fact is that often the good, well-sourced stuff is expensive. Another sad fact: a lot of people are relatively to very poor, even in "developed" countries. Currently I am glad to actually be able to make choices in this regard, but just over three years ago I had precisely none and really had to buy the cheapest stuff that wasn't awful, and that reality is probably the present for many people.

And while I do support having some degree of personal responsibility and making conscious choices whenever you can, I am also very much against putting all the responsibility on the consumer, which is precisely what those companies want and why they pretend to care about values they don't give a shit about. When you add up together the two facts above (many people can't afford to make these choices + you'd literally have to google - oh wait, Google - every single company and service you consider buying for crimes every time), the fact is that it's very difficult for any kind of grassroots initiative to make a real dent in the profits of most of those corporations. We're living in a world where Facebook has basically been confirmed to have committed espionage and treason and no one has gone to jail and they're still a legally operating company.

I believe it's good to make any amount of impact you reasonably can without crossing the line into fanaticism (ditching Spotify being step 1), if only to make some tiny difference and hope more people will, but I have no delusions at this point and the only way this will change is heavy legislation on those monsters. Break up corporations, penalise crimes with fines of % of annual profit, and for crimes with real victims CEOs and the company board should finally go to prison. I don't believe in any bullshit fairytale revolution, but I do believe pushing for this is the only meaningful way to change this and society as a whole.

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MRmehman
Metalhead

Joined: Thu Feb 12, 2015 1:34 pm
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Location: The Painted World of Ariamis
PostPosted: Fri Jun 04, 2021 6:29 pm 
 

There is no ethical consumption under capitalism but it's essential to pay attention to the worst offenders and avoid them whenever you can. Sadly, it's functionally impossible to live outside the system indefinitely.

Good thread so far.
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~Guest 361478
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PostPosted: Sun Jun 06, 2021 1:50 am 
 

RainyTheBusinessPerson wrote:
I now feel more conscious about what I buy, avoiding stuff from brands I know are responsible for inhuman actions, not because I believe it will bankrupt any of these companies, that would be stupid and ingenuous, but because I don't feel like giving my money to companies like these, I don't want to endorse that, I don't want my money to go towards them.

Do any you also do anything like this? If so, how much, to extreme extents, or more loosely (I consider myself to still be on the loose end, since I'm just starting out with this, and have to still get used to it, which is basically looking up brands and see which ones have done some legitimately terrible stuff). It's particularly hard honestly, there are so many options out there, all that I have to do is see which ones are at the very least ethical.


Making that personal leap is really important - that's what my family have found over time; making the initial leap, and then starting to make choices; it really opens up your eyes not just to the bad things, but also to the good things that so many people do in an effort to live better. It's actually quite liberating to find that not everything & everyone is awful.

Hexenmacht46290 wrote:
People will act negative, and try to derail you with “but what about this other thing you buy?” Nonsense. Or other stupid questions. I would encourage you not to listen to them, and I would also encourage you to not think in black-and-white, all-or-nothing ways.


I pretty much agree with your whole post, and particularly about those that just want to be negative. We try out our best here; having a particular focus on animal / environmental protections has meant that over the years we just don't buy certain product classes at all. On the other hand, I still have to buy diesel for my car; no way to avoid that, or the awful people & processes involved in the entire thing. We try to do as much good as we practically can, and as little harm also. On the other hand, regarding food, a simple mantra of 'If it's got palm oil / beef or pork gelatine / almonds in it, don't buy it' removes you from a lot of potentially bad choices from the get go, for example.

One thing I really hate, and that has come out of doing the reading, is the weaselly 'Designed In', 'Assembled In', 'Engineered In' labels attached to a lot of (especially electronic) goods. Someone like Rega, the turntable maker, for example. What they mean to say, and it's usually clear in the small print, is that it's actually entirely made in in the Far East, but they've clipped on a cover or something the UK, or the original design work was done in the UK, and then all of the production outsourced. Trying to obscure the origins of a product like that makes it much harder to make good choices. Going to back to Rega, I only discovered their dishonesty talking on other forums to people that repair their kit - the moving parts are all bought in, and they just clip things together here and stick a union jack and a massive markup on it.

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Hexenmacht46290
Has a GED in Gamercide

Joined: Sun Jul 05, 2020 8:30 pm
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Location: United States
PostPosted: Sun Jun 06, 2021 3:38 am 
 

As an example of a better ecological choice also being more practical, for me, it’s shoes. I lift weights and run, in minimal shoes, or weightlifting shoes. They’re big box brands, not recycled materials, and not really repairable. But most of the day, at work, or otherwise, I’m usually wearing boots. I have a few pairs, that were all made in the country I live in, and I’ve gotten liners and soles replaced. When you get them back, it’s like a new pair of shoes, that are already broken in, to your feet.

That used to be how most shoes were, before mass production made everything cheaper, after world war 2. I could buy cheaper ones, where the soles are glued on, like sneakers, rather than stitched on, which can be replaced, but I’d rather not. I was tired of those kind of shoes coming apart, after just a few weeks. Even if I were buying from an unethical company, I’m actually paying less money. And the amount of waste is just a fraction, of the alternative. The leather and rubber aren’t perfect, but I use much less of it, over time. Combine that with much better function, like staying waterproof, and better toughness, and you really can’t beat it. Sometimes, ecological is affordable.
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kingnuuuur
Metalhead

Joined: Thu Apr 24, 2008 3:35 pm
Posts: 2325
PostPosted: Sun Jun 06, 2021 4:08 am 
 

Methuen wrote:
On the other hand, regarding food, a simple mantra of 'If it's got palm oil / beef or pork gelatine / almonds in it, don't buy it' removes you from a lot of potentially bad choices from the get go, for example.

:scratch: Care to explain why?
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~Guest 361478
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Joined: Tue May 19, 2015 4:55 pm
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PostPosted: Sun Jun 06, 2021 4:34 am 
 

kingnuuuur wrote:
Methuen wrote:
On the other hand, regarding food, a simple mantra of 'If it's got palm oil / beef or pork gelatine / almonds in it, don't buy it' removes you from a lot of potentially bad choices from the get go, for example.

:scratch: Care to explain why?


Happy to -
1 - If you're not buying palm oil, you're not buying into a tonne of problematic deforestation / slavery / animal abuse situations. There's really no such thing as 'sustainable' palm oil, either, when you factor in processing, shipping, etc.
2 - If you're not buying foods containing meat-gelatine, you're not buying into the worst excesses of industrial animal farming & processing (IE: industrial reprocessing from the cheapest factory-farmed animals; include also the human impact in those facilities).
3 - If you're not buying foods using almonds, you're not buying into a highly destructive industry in terms of land management, farming practices, treatment of workers (see the big US almond farms, where most firms get their raw materials for almond milk, for example).

None of them are essentials, or in the case of gelatine and palm oil, necessary; it's not a hard change to make, but it is a good one. Saves us a fortune in not buying biscuits and clever ersatz milk, too :D

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InnesI
The Goat Fucker

Joined: Sat Jun 01, 2013 3:19 pm
Posts: 2187
PostPosted: Sun Jun 06, 2021 4:59 am 
 

I think starting with yourself, or on a very small level, is the only way you can feel that you make a difference. I made this point in the environmental debate some months ago. It's all good with global climate agreements but it probably won't make people feel responsible. It just shifts the perspective (and we've all heard something along the lines of "but if china/india/us/x don't do it why should I?" That's why I encourage things in the local milieu. I often take sanitizing a local lake as an example. When people see the effects themselves it is more powerful to actually change how one lives.

That said I'm not a very good example. Not that I disregard and buy things I know are bad but that I haven't really read up on what is good and what is bad. I try to buy locally produced food when I can but its really not possible all that often (especially since I don't own a mode for transportation - local food shops only have a very limited stock of locally produced stuff). But then again I do not drive a car, I very rarely fly (its been years and years since I last did it), never really travel by boat etc. SO perhaps I climate compensate through that (and idea which itself is questionable).

I once had someone I met at work a few years ago. She was a vegetarian (perhaps vegan) because of environmental reasons. She instead ate a lot of avocado - and this was at the time when it was reported heavily that the production of avocados might even be more harmful to the environment than the consumption of meat. So its also that aspect. Remember how diesel was demonized maybe 20 years ago? Then about 10 years ago it was suddenly portrayed as better again. And now we're mostly back full circle again. Or how we imagine that if its digital (books, messaging, movies, music etc) its better for the environment because there is no physical product. However the electronic industry is a massive problem in many different ways and the energy it takes to keep all the servers going for us to enjoy online content causes a lot of strain on the environment as well.

This is not an excuse to do nothing, it is just to show the complexity of the problem. It's easy to skip Nestlés or Doles products but how do we know that the alternative is better. It's quite a feat to actually consume consciously and I admire anyone who does so.
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kingnuuuur
Metalhead

Joined: Thu Apr 24, 2008 3:35 pm
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PostPosted: Sun Jun 06, 2021 6:33 am 
 

Methuen wrote:
1 - If you're not buying palm oil, you're not buying into a tonne of problematic deforestation / slavery / animal abuse situations. There's really no such thing as 'sustainable' palm oil, either, when you factor in processing, shipping, etc. [...] None of them are essentials, or in the case of gelatine and palm oil, necessary

I should say that I agree that palm oil is unnecessary, at least as a cooking oil. I'll even take a step further and say that all cooking oils (sunflower, canola, soybean, etc.) are not just completely unnecessary, but also harmful. Having said that, oil palms are by far the most land-efficient crop to grow for vegetable oil production, providing almost six times more oil yield per land than the next most efficient crop, sunflowers. If you refrain yourself from buying palm oil but choose to go for other vegetable oils, then not only are you not doing anything to solve the problems of land use and slavery, you're working on making them worse. The best choice to make in this case would be to stop consuming vegetable oils altogether.

Now granted, some seed oils such as linseed have uses outside the culinary world, notably as vehicles in oil-based paint formulations which is a huge industry of its own (think artistic painting and car paint). But there are reasonable alternatives to those too, so they're still not 100% necessary.

Methuen wrote:
2 - If you're not buying foods containing meat-gelatine, you're not buying into the worst excesses of industrial animal farming & processing (IE: industrial reprocessing from the cheapest factory-farmed animals; include also the human impact in those facilities).

Okay, but I'm surprised you're not including things such as leather, fur, wool, mink lashes, and badger and boar bristles here, since those animal products (and many others) and their industries fall into that category too. I'm not sure what the word "excesses" means to you, but I'm more concerned about exploiting and abusing animals in general and causing them suffering and death when there's no real need to.

Methuen wrote:
3 - If you're not buying foods using almonds, you're not buying into a highly destructive industry in terms of land management, farming practices, treatment of workers (see the big US almond farms, where most firms get their raw materials for almond milk, for example).

I can't disagree, but again I'm surprised that you're singling out almond milk and leaving out the biggest offender here, which is dairy milk.

Also, if you're looking for the most destructive industry in terms of land use/management and farming practices, look no further.

As for human exploitation, it's unfortunately really hard to escape. Almond farms are only a microcosm of slave labour happening all around the world to feed and clothe humans. Without leaving legumes, look up the kind of suffering that happens to get cashews onto people's plates.
https://www.slowfood.com/cashew-nuts-a-toxic-industry/
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrin ... e-nut.html
http://www.stoptorture-vn.org/cashews-a ... ustry.html

Methuen wrote:
it's not a hard change to make, but it is a good one.

The good changes to make are not always obvious in this world.
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~Guest 361478
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PostPosted: Sun Jun 06, 2021 8:06 am 
 

kingnuuuur wrote:
Methuen wrote:
1 - If you're not buying palm oil, you're not buying into a tonne of problematic deforestation / slavery / animal abuse situations. There's really no such thing as 'sustainable' palm oil, either, when you factor in processing, shipping, etc. [...] None of them are essentials, or in the case of gelatine and palm oil, necessary

I should say that I agree that palm oil is unnecessary, at least as a cooking oil. I'll even take a step further and say that all cooking oils (sunflower, canola, soybean, etc.) are not just completely unnecessary, but also harmful. Having said that, oil palms are by far the most land-efficient crop to grow for vegetable oil production, providing almost six times more oil yield per land than the next most efficient crop, sunflowers. If you refrain yourself from buying palm oil but choose to go for other vegetable oils, then not only are you not doing anything to solve the problems of land use and slavery, you're working on making them worse. The best choice to make in this case would be to stop consuming vegetable oils altogether.

Now granted, some seed oils such as linseed have uses outside the culinary world, notably as vehicles in oil-based paint formulations which is a huge industry of its own (think artistic painting and car paint). But there are reasonable alternatives to those too, so they're still not 100% necessary.

Methuen wrote:
2 - If you're not buying foods containing meat-gelatine, you're not buying into the worst excesses of industrial animal farming & processing (IE: industrial reprocessing from the cheapest factory-farmed animals; include also the human impact in those facilities).

Okay, but I'm surprised you're not including things such as leather, fur, wool, mink lashes, and badger and boar bristles here, since those animal products (and many others) and their industries fall into that category too. I'm not sure what the word "excesses" means to you, but I'm more concerned about exploiting and abusing animals in general and causing them suffering and death when there's no real need to.

Methuen wrote:
3 - If you're not buying foods using almonds, you're not buying into a highly destructive industry in terms of land management, farming practices, treatment of workers (see the big US almond farms, where most firms get their raw materials for almond milk, for example).

I can't disagree, but again I'm surprised that you're singling out almond milk and leaving out the biggest offender here, which is dairy milk.

Also, if you're looking for the most destructive industry in terms of land use/management and farming practices, look no further.

As for human exploitation, it's unfortunately really hard to escape. Almond farms are only a microcosm of slave labour happening all around the world to feed and clothe humans. Without leaving legumes, look up the kind of suffering that happens to get cashews onto people's plates.
https://www.slowfood.com/cashew-nuts-a-toxic-industry/
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrin ... e-nut.html
http://www.stoptorture-vn.org/cashews-a ... ustry.html

Methuen wrote:
it's not a hard change to make, but it is a good one.

The good changes to make are not always obvious in this world.


You're dead right - there are plenty of problematic things out there, nice to see someone else into all this stuff :D - no disagreement at all ! (If I'd listed the lot, I get the feeling no-one would have read the post, haha)

On the examples I used -

I did specifically pick on palm oil because it's omnipresent in junk food, snacks, places it doesn't need to be - cutting out that ingredient is easy & also cuts out a lot of other unnecessary consumption in plastic packaging, etc.

I specifically called out almonds because they're seen as the 'healthy', 'good' option in some contexts; when you look at the large scale destruction of land / insect life / aquifers in the US, well. Similar to Avocado and Soy-everything. It's dead easy to cut out, too.

I picked on gelatine for much the same reason as palm oil - all of that junk food containing it can be cut out of any diet with no bad effects, but you do a bit of good by dropping it. I don't imagine many of us here have mink fur coats, but I imagine plenty of us eat Mars bars and Haribo sweets !

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thrashmaniac87
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PostPosted: Sun Jun 06, 2021 2:09 pm 
 

Constellation Brands is a Fortune 500 company that owns beverage producers, the biggest being Corona, Modelo, Pacifico and their most recent acquisiton being Ballast Point. They produce everything in Mexicali and use 1.8 billion gallons of water a year. That area already has issues with water supply and this is just compounding the problem. Local protestors have even been beaten by cops for demonstrating.

It's something nobody seems to talk about. I only heard about it when Ballast Point sold to Constellation for $1 Billion. I live in San Diego so that was a pretty big deal but mostly because "tHeY sOLd OuT!!" and not because they were taking a natural resource from people who desperately need it and giving it to Americans.

I don't how popular Mexican beer is in other parts of the country but Modelo is EXPLODING down here so the problem is only getting worse.
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~Guest 361478
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PostPosted: Mon Jun 07, 2021 4:04 am 
 

thrashmaniac87 wrote:
Constellation Brands is a Fortune 500 company that owns beverage producers, the biggest being Corona, Modelo, Pacifico and their most recent acquisiton being Ballast Point. They produce everything in Mexicali and use 1.8 billion gallons of water a year. That area already has issues with water supply and this is just compounding the problem. Local protestors have even been beaten by cops for demonstrating.

It's something nobody seems to talk about. I only heard about it when Ballast Point sold to Constellation for $1 Billion. I live in San Diego so that was a pretty big deal but mostly because "tHeY sOLd OuT!!" and not because they were taking a natural resource from people who desperately need it and giving it to Americans.

I don't how popular Mexican beer is in other parts of the country but Modelo is EXPLODING down here so the problem is only getting worse.


Thanks for that - it's even worse than you reckon above - they openly report their water useage on a 'sustainability' page on their site - https://www.cbrands.com/responsibility/sustainability - 26,000 megaliters - so 29,000 * 1,000,000 = 29bn litres of water, apparently, across their entire enterprise.

Their response back in 2016 was https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jun/30/americans-beer-corona-mexico-water-crisis
Quote:
“These are erroneous comments,” brewery spokesman César Isidro Muñoz said of the mayor’s letter. “Even if the brewery did not exist, Zaragoza would still water problems.”

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Turner
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Joined: Fri Aug 23, 2002 2:04 am
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Location: Australia
PostPosted: Mon Jun 07, 2021 6:23 am 
 

It's a lot more complicated than "stop buying from unethical companies". No one in this thread has mentioned it so I'll go ahead:

First point is that most production of goods occurs in the developing world these days.

Second is that minimum wage fluctuates from country to country, and most countries we (the west) source shit from have none.

Third is that pretty much none of those source countries enforce income tax laws. Developing world economies are based on overseas remittances, which is admittedly an unreliable way to do things, but what can they do? If no one pays income tax in country X and people receive payments from overseas they don't have to declare, the local labour laws suffer. Local producers have to work with shit prices, pay their workers bad wages. Corrupt officials don't give a shit, they're already on the payroll.

Fourth is that because most source countries are a free for all, everything is on the cards. When you're living on the poverty line, working at a palm oil plantation doesn't seem so bad. Killing a tiger to sell its penis? Yeah whatever, your family has to eat and you're uneducated anyway, so what do you care about killing a big cat? No point applying western values to that.

The flipside is that if you want ethically-based goods, you have to pay through the nose. Ethical sourcing is a bourgeois affair. If you really care, you have to bear the costs of someone in a shittier place. Donate some money to education in the developing world, and lobby political groups that will push for income tax regulation in the developing world. That's the key to ending unethical practices.

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hakarl
Metel fraek

Joined: Sat Sep 29, 2007 1:41 pm
Posts: 8817
Location: Finland
PostPosted: Mon Jun 07, 2021 6:27 am 
 

Methuen wrote:
Their response back in 2016 was https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jun/30/americans-beer-corona-mexico-water-crisis
Quote:
“These are erroneous comments,” brewery spokesman César Isidro Muñoz said of the mayor’s letter. “Even if the brewery did not exist, Zaragoza would still water problems.”

Talk about a bad cop-out. That's fucked!
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~Guest 361478
Metalhead

Joined: Tue May 19, 2015 4:55 pm
Posts: 1930
PostPosted: Mon Jun 07, 2021 10:03 am 
 

Agreed - the public relations from these vampire squid conglomerates is usually pretty clearly 'fuck off, peasant'. Unilever over here have been the same way in the past, along the lines of 'if we didn't battery farm chickens, and charged you more for mayonnaise, you'd just be buying it from battery farmed chickens from Heinz, because we'd be charging more'. Cynical bastards :lol:

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DeadKid
Metalhead

Joined: Mon Jan 03, 2011 8:51 am
Posts: 538
Location: New Zealand
PostPosted: Tue Jul 06, 2021 6:45 am 
 

I can't say I avoid brands based on their behaviour. Switching to another doesn't always seem worthwhile, especially if you're familiar with the '10 Companies Control Almost Everything We Eat' diagram that was posted around a while back. The ethical companies you switch to may get bought out and then you're back where you started.

Aside from food, I do try to buy things that last and am careful of what brands I buy in that sense. Companies that make poor quality products certainly aren't helping the planet. Others may have the right intentions, but I'm still better to get decades of life out of the old thing I have.

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