Sound Of Sirens

“From its extraction through sale, use and disposal, all the stuff in our lives affects communities at home and abroad, yet most of this is hidden from view. The Story of Stuff is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns. The Story of Stuff exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable and just world.

It’ll teach you something, it’ll make you laugh, and it just may change the way you look at all the stuff in your life forever.”

Teaser #1:

You’ll find more teaser videos, background information and even the whole movie as a free download on storyofstuff.com

(Thanks to Melanie)

Großartige Aktion von Kirsten Brodde, Textilexpertin und Redakteurin des Greenpeace Magazins. Sie bestellte Shirts über eine Tchibo Online Plattform mit subersiven Texten bedruckt wie “Dieses Shirt hat ein Kind für Tchibo genäht” oder “Tchibo Shirts: Gefertigt für Hungerlöhne”.

Tja, da hat mal jemand den Spiess umgedreht und auf eine ganz andere Art und Weise die Vorzüge von Globalisierung und Automatisierung genutzt. Sehr schön!

Die dazugehörigen Artikel findet ihr auf Kirsten Broddes Blog. Der Anfang, Teil II, Teil III

“LobbyControl ist ein gemeinnütziger Verein, der über Machtstrukturen und Einflussstrategien in Deutschland und der EU aufklären will.”

Sehr, sehr lobenswertes Projekt, welches aktive Aufklärungsarbeit in Form eines Blogs, Printpublikationen, Events und Studien leistet. Besonders angetan hat es mir natürlich die Studie über Greenwashing in Deutschland.

Ich wünsche mir viel mehr öffentliche Aufmerksamkeit bezüglich den Einfluss von Unternehmen und Marken auf Politik und Gesellschaft. NGO’s wie LobbyControl leisten meiner Meinung nach einen unschätzbaren Dienst - und sei es auch nur die Dokumentation. Ich bin sogar der Meinung, dass der Umgang mit Marketing aus Sicht des Konsumenten ein Teil der Schulbildung sein sollte. Auf Grund der enormen Vernetzung von Politik, Medien und Wirtschaft, sowie der rasant Ansteigenden Relevanz neuer und/oder alternativer Werbeformen wird es immer schwerer, tatsächliche Absender und Hintergründe von Informationen zu erkennen - und schliesslich soll uns ja die Schule dabei helfen, als mündige Bürger durch das Leben zu gehen. Naja, nur so ein Gedanke.

In diesem Zusammenhang möchte ich auch auf die Online-Aktion für Lobbytransparenz in Europa hinweisen, bei der es um mehr Transparenz in der europäischen Entscheidungsfindung geht. Macht mit!

“Last Friday, I had the pleasure of attending a conference hosted by UCLA covering a variety of business topics related to sustainability, corporate social responsibility, and ‘green’. This panel looks at how marketing executives are devising strategies for shaping and managing their brands’ eco-friendly profiles.
I videotaped the ‘Green Marketing Strategies’ session, and broke up the hour discussion into 8 segments for the viewing pleasure at your pace and interests:

• Opening & Introduction
• Consumer Profiles
• Greenwashing
• Branded Content & Connecting with Customers
• Power of Kids & Parents
• Cause Related Strategies
• Q&A - Internal Buy-In
• Q&A - Pricing Considerations

Moderator:
Beverly Macy, Managing Partner/Co-Founder, Y & M Partners, LLC

Panelists (from left to right):
Joe Hartnett, Principal Consultant, Hartnett & Associates
Brenda Lynch, Senior Vice President, Rogers Group
Barbara Manconi, President & CEO and Founder, VERT Brands”

That’s what Mario Vellandi said.

As you can see, the marketing-guys are getting more and more involved into green issues - well, i know that’s not fairly new - the big thing is: it’s getting harder to seperate the companies that really care from the greenwashing others…

The Dalai Lama was in Berlin yesterday and we participated in the demonstration to show our solidarity with the Tibetan People.
Knowing a bit on the background of the history of Tibet and the Dalai Lama it is beautiful and quite outstanding to hear him and witness his clarity, spontaneity and openness. Being a buddhist he believes in the interconnection and interdependence of all beings. (This is the same understanding modern science or indigenous people have and that plays, and will play more and more, a key role in our ability to create sustainable communities, or, to put it more bluntly: our ability to survive.) It is the understanding of: If you destroy the other, ultimately you destroy yourself.
This believe and wisdom is being put into prisons, tortured, massacred and intended to be cut off from the world. Its language, its traditions, its people are being wiped out for the sake of progress and stability.

Ok, this is about the media and its functions. Again: I do not claim to be an expert, call me a generalist, however, let’s see how far we get.

I’ll start with a quote of a beautiful essay by Donella Meadows, a professor, biophysicist, systems analyst, organic farmer, author, journalist and inspiration in the movement for sustainability. The essay is called ‘Dancing with Systems‘ and this particular part is about ‘Honouring and protecting information.’

A decision maker can’t respond to information he or she doesn’t have, can’t respond accurately to information that is inaccurate, can’t respond in a timely way to information that is late. I would guess that 99 percent of what goes wrong in systems goes wrong because of faulty or missing information.

If I could, I would add an Eleventh Commandment: Thou shalt not distort, delay, or sequester information. You can drive a system crazy by muddying its information streams. You can make a system work better with surprising ease if you can give it more timely, more accurate, more complete information.

Nice idea and story from the guys at spacehijackers. Buy-nothing-day was yesterday!Click!(via s2k, thanks to andreas)

Please be aware of that. And please be aware that socalled free trade is an invention that destroys lifes, cultures and our planet.
Also we do not have to go to the rain forest, to India or North America, the same thing is happening in Finland, where indigenous people are being marginalized and robbed of their rights, land is being taken and robbed of its resources, governments are backing corporations.
Watch this documentary: Last Yoik In Sami Forests?, check the website: www.elonmerkki.net

The shift, the change will come through us, through people who speak up, who demand their rights, who create lively cultures and lively democracies, who think and act as an interdependent world family, looking for ways from being dependend consumers to responsible producers.

We have to replace the well being of corporations again with the wellbeing of real people and real societies. We have to create and build new self-governing economies. Connect which each other, learn from each other.
Know more: Vandana Shiva on zmag.org
Connect: CivWorld Interdependence Day,
Find support: Post Carbon Institute (Assists societies in their efforts to relocalize communities and adapt to an energy constrained world.)
Transition Towns (Local responses to the challenges of climate change and peak oil. Relocalization, Network and Support)

Ok, there have been a lot of videos lately on Sound Of Sirens. Still, Vandana Shiva is making a point about the global food crisis which i consider very important to be known and understood. For more background info read her book: Earth Democracy (auf deutsch: Erd-Demokratie). By the way: The IMF is the International Monetary Fund, which is an international organization that oversees the global financial system. The headquarters are located in Washington, D.C. USA…

Picture by Treehugger

Last week i stumbled upon several sites with some interesting artcles and news about greenwashing. Due to the lack of time for blogging, you’ll get them as a single link-list right now:

• Marketers, Not Consumers, Need Environmental Education - Greenwashing Has Made It Hard to Know What to Believe.
• Record Complains over Greenwashing - Shell identified as one of the worst offenders (OK, not that big news - but everytime worth mentioning it again and again, again…)
• Greenwashing - very insightful interview with an an “employee of a major multinational corporation”.
• Clean up your ACT not your image - Greenpeace marked Earth Day 2008 with the launch of project StopGreenwash. Wow - huge! You can submit greenwashing examples here.
• How Marketers analyze the green Buzz today. Some statistics from the Center Of Media Research Blog.
• Is your corporate really green? - Very good article at CNBC, including The Six Sins of Greenwashing. Find some more related CNBC news here.
• ‘Recyclable’ is so last century - Valerie Davis, President, Green Canary Sustainability Consulting shows us the differents between oldschool 90’s greenspeak and today.

OK - all quite usa-focused, i guess everything is transferrable to the rest of the globe, though. So, what’s the conclusion? Both sides are aware of the problems, hopefully the companies seriously start “cleaning up their acts, not just their images” some day…

Just click on the play button and let her speak for a minute…She is clear, honest, accessible, intelligent,…

Read also SOS on Tour article on a talk of Vandana Shiva at the Schumacher College in march ‘08 (in german).

Find more articles of her here.

This is one of her book publications: ‘Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability and Peace’ / ‘Erd-Demokratie. Alternativen zur Neoliberalen Globalisierung’.

Ich hoffe, wir haben das Thema Bio-Kraftstoffe und dessen Hintergründe in unserem Artikel über Vandana Shivas Vortrag am Schumacher College ein bischen zugänglich machen können.

Hier setzt sich Fidel Castro damit auseinander. Sehr klar und überlegt und auf einem exzellenten unabhängigen, deutschen Nachrichten Portal (www.hintergrund.de):

Ãœberlegungen zu sogenannten Bio-Kraftstoffen

von Fidel Castro Ruz

Ãœber drei Milliarden Menschen sind auf der Welt durch Verhungern und Verdursten zum Tode verurteilt
– Das ist keine übertriebene Zahl, eher eine vorsichtige Schätzung. Ich habe viel darüber nachgedacht seit dem Treffen von Präsident Bush mit den us-amerikanischen Automobilherstellern. Die unheilvolle Idee, die Nahrungsmittel in Kraftstoff zu verwandeln, wurde am vergangenen Montag, dem 26. März (2007, Anmerkung SOS), endgültig als Wirtschaftsleitlinie der Außenpolitik der Vereinigten Staaten festgelegt. Eine Meldung der AP, einer US-amerikanischen Nachrichtenagentur, die alle Winkel der Welt erreicht, lautet wörtlich wie folgt: (1)

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