I have decided in the long run that I do not want to spend the rest of my life working for the fast food industry. I am in the process of reading Paul Hawken's Blessed Unrest on the part of how corporations have maintained their power grip on society for them to continuously exist.
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Sometimes I would think about how much of a multi-national company's budget goes into PR and how much into efforts towards sustainable development or lets just say environmental improvements that will lead to minimal environment, health and safety impacts within the course of their supply chains?
Is certification and validated ecolabels enough to say that companies are indeed doing their best? Being involved in matters of ISO audits and certification, we still have a long way to go and there are still so much possibilities that can be done both technical and administrative...but the challenge is the impacts of our old ways are now creeping up on us at a faster rate than the speed we have about changing our paradigms.
I also pose a caveat on changing paradigms, changing mindsets does not necessarily change our values and often I have dealt with corporate people who have strong environmental advocacy but have a very weak value system that supports change such personalities can lead to futile programs and campaigns that often lead to greenwash and in the end shames corporations in shameful shade of red...
When green wash fails, often they go back to white wash...advocating their purity and innocence.
This burger is only available for a limited time in Japan who among the world has a population with the longest life span. Beef and Japan is a truly ironic combination even the fact that some Japanese still believe that whale meat is a cultural delicacy. I'm just posting a picture, this is a complicated matter...
Its quite hard and frustrating to live in the third world. I remember in 2002, when one of the Earth Summit agreements in Johannesburg specified that developing nations also have a responsibility in ensuring the implementation of Global Agenda 21.
Once going to Greenbelt 4 and looking at window of a high end stores, I asked the price of a patent leather pump and the saleslady told me its 56,000 pesos or around a thousand dollars. I realized that there are people who could afford them and the growth of affluence in third world is growing faster compared to the rate of efficient utilization of natural resources. I was always taught that after the Marcos era the Philippines has a very limited natural resource base.
The effort to go green in the third world is very minimal. Firms still chose to produce inefficiently, meaning externalizing their environmental impact. When I conduct trainings for company-assigned Pollution Control Officers, their mere notion is that environmental improvement can be achieved by getting and maintaining the necessary permits. But I have to ingrain in them that it is only the first step and in the long run, they must be able to change the mindset of their management by becoming more responsible through internalization of their environmental impacts.
