Dr. Dara O'Rourke is a professor in the Dept. of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management at UC Berkeley, and formerly a professor at MIT. He studies the environmental, social, and health impacts of global supply chains.
GoodGuide helps you find safe, healthy, and green products that are better for you and the planet.
Over the last decade of conducting research on these issues, I have ended up mainly talking to a few other academics (and talking to myself on occasion;) about the sometimes arcane details of global supply chains.
However, since launching GoodGuide, we have realized we have created a platform of sorts for conversations with a wide range of stakeholders on these issues - and in particular - on debates about transparency in the marketplace.
We are now hearing directly from thousands of our users. In fact, we have been a bit overwhelmed by the richness of the feedback and input from our users. So we are now building better ways to receive ideas and to respond to them. The great news on this is that people really want to know more about the products they are using. We are learning a lot about the issues the public cares most about, what products they want us to rate next, and where our information is not clear enough.
We have also been having some very interesting conversations with academics, non-profit organizations, and leaders from industry. This has led to some new collaborations and partnerships to get better information out to the public. For instance, we just partnered with ClimateCounts.org to flow their information on the climate policies and practices of companies that produce the goods we consume.
We have also been having some interesting conversations with reporters. I was just interviewed for TechNation today, which should be aired on NPR stations around the US in the coming week. I also recently got to sit down with Daniel Goleman to talk about the science and rating systems behind GoodGuide. It is rare these days to ever get to talk in detail beyond soundbites in the media. So it was a real pleasure to dig into some of details of GoodGuide and broader movements for transparency in the marketplace. You can download our interview, called Ecological Awareness, and check out other great interviews between Daniel and Greg Norris and Michael Lerner.
What I think all of these conversations are showing is that we are at the beginning of a potentially very rich conversation between consumers, manufacturers, retailers, and other stakeholders in these supply chains. We would love to expand and facilitate this dialogue as we build GoodGuide. So please let us know how you think we can do a better job of supporting these conversations on transparency.
Tonight on his PBS show, Bill Moyers asked whether the movement towards “radical transparency” that Daniel Goleman describes in his new book Ecological Intelligence is really happening. Goleman responded by pointing to a generational shift that shows younger people not only care more about environmental and social issues, but that they also have the social networking prowess to spread this information.
I agree with Goleman, but believe the movement towards greater transparency is happening even faster than this generational change.
As just one example, over the last month there has been a major shift towards greater transparency by household products companies here in the US. Historically, household chemical manufacturers in the US did not have to disclose their ingredients unless they fell within very specific parameters (e.g., active ingredients above a certain concentration that are known to be toxic). This means most chemicals do NOT have to be listed.
To understand the irrationality of our current product labeling system, go into your bathroom and look at your liquid hand soap and then look at the harshest chemical you can find - maybe your toilet bowl or tile cleaner. Notice that the hand soap - which is classified as a personal care product - lists all of its ingredients, in order of concentration. While the much stronger household cleaning chemicals likely lists one or even zero ingredients.
Given the opportunity to not be transparent with their customers about the chemicals in their products, most companies choose to hide behind a veil of marketing claims, and more recently green claims.
But this is very rapidly changing. Without any new government regulation, but some important non-profit efforts (check out the campaign of Women’s Voices for the Earth), mainstream companies are following the lead of smaller green companies, and disclosing their ingredients voluntarily. Clorox recently announced that they are disclosing all of their ingredients on their website. SC Johnson followed suit. As did Method Home.
[Let me know if you know of any other companies releasing ingredient data recently.]
These companies had previously argued that their ingredient lists were confidential business information, and that they couldn’t disclose them because of a threat of lost market share. I believe these same companies are now realizing that the real threat to their sales and their brands is from being considered non-transparent. As they say, the cover-up is often worse than the crime in the US.
This is just one of many examples of increased transparency in the marketplace. I will be discussing more of these cases in the coming weeks.
With all the press around the current swine flu epidemic, which has killed more than 150 people and sent thousands more to hospitals, it is somewhat disturbing that officials have not yet uncovered the source of the outbreak. Bloggers around the world have been working overtime to document the chain of illnesses, and more importantly to try to identify the source of the the virus in Mexico.
It now appears that the first illnesses were reported in small town called La Gloria, in the state of Vera Cruz in Mexico. La Gloria also happens to be the home to a massive hog farm owned by Smithfield Foods, the world’s largest producer of hogs.
As Ed Harris from Local Foods Research explains, “Bloggers… are exploring the links between Mexico’s industrial hog production industry—Smithfield Foods in particular—and the emergence of the new viral strain.”
Smithfield operates massive hog-raising operations in Perote, Mexico, in the state of Vera Cruz, where the outbreak originated. The operations, grouped under a Smithfield subsidiary called Granjas Carrol, raise 950,000 hogs per year…. The Mexico City daily La Jornada has also made the link. According to the newspaper, the Mexican health agency IMSS has acknowledged that the orginal carrier for the flu could be the “clouds of flies” that multiply in the Smithfield subsidiary’s manure lagoons.
While there is no concern that pork coming from Smithfield is contaminated in any way, as swine flu is spread via human contact, not food, this story once again reinforces the need for Country of Origin Labeling Laws to help us track an increasingly global and industrialized food system.
It will be a real be a wake up call if health officials confirm that this potentially fatal health threat, which is now spreading through casual human contact, originated in CAFOs that are the source of much of our food.
In this book, Goleman argues that markets are shifting towards something he calls “Radical Transparency” as consumers demand much more information on the products they buy everyday. With advances in global information systems, and in the science of measuring product impacts through tools such as Life Cycle Assessment, the public is finally beginning to be able to access comprehensive information on the trade-offs inherent in their purchasing decisions.
Goleman asserts:
If we get better, more complete information about the true effects of an item at the moment we are deciding whether to buy it, we could make wiser decisions. Such full disclosure can make each of us an agent for small, gradual changes that, when multiplied by millions, will ripple through the industrial enterprise, from manufacturing and design, through supply chains and transport, to the distant ends of consumption.
In the New York Times earlier this week, Goleman and Greg Norris (one of GoodGuide’s advisors), published an op-art piece showing what this kind of transparency could tell you about your choice in bottles.
In the book, Goleman surveys a host of efforts to advance Ecological Intelligence, and he very generously concludes that:
“GoodGuide offers proof of concept, a concrete example of how radical transparency might work.”
While flattered, and very much aligned with this vision for providing the public much better information on products and companies, or own efforts to advance greater transparency are only just getting going. Fortunately, we are now part of a strong and growing ecosystem of organizations aligned for increased transparency and accountability in the marketplace. And more importantly, the public itself is driving this wave of interest in radical transparency.
Our job remains to listen to your needs and to get you better and better information to help you make decisions in your life. If Goleman is right, we will be busy for the coming decade!
If you want to learn more about the research behind the book, or to hear interviews delving into the issues covered in the book, including one with yours truly, check out the Ecological Awareness page at More Than Sound.
With Earth Day approaching, green claims are sprouting like daffodils through the spring dirt. And with what seems like almost every company claiming they are now green (Really? Chevron? Really?), it is hard to see through this green noise to which products and companies are actually taking significant steps to improve their environmental performance.
A report out this week from the Canadian firm TerraChoice asserts that 98% of green package claims suffer from at least one of “Seven Sins of Greenwashing.” Joel Makower, one of my favorite analysts of green marketing does a nice job deconstructing TerraChoice’s analysis and the marketing mixed into their own report. Nonetheless, TerraChoice comes to some interesting findings:
The total number of green products is up 79% since 2007.
Green advertisements have almost tripled since 2006.
Of the 2,219 products they studied that make green claims, over 98% committed one of TerraChoice’s seven “sins” of greenwashing.
Toys, baby products, cosmetics and cleaning products are the four categories in which green claims – and greenwashing – are most common.
Now you know why GoodGuide started by rating personal care, baby care, toys, and household cleaning chemicals. Industry has been spending huge sums greenwashing in exactly the categories that have the most problematic chemicals, and for which the public has become most concerned. GoodGuide is in one sense, a simple tool to help you see through marketing claims to the actual environmental and health impacts of products and companies.
The good news in all of this is that consumer concerns are finally getting attention in the marketplace. Brands and retailers now see a real threat in consumer awareness around toxic ingredients, pollution from production, sweatshops, etc. And an increasing number of firms see a real opportunity if they can convince you that their products are green and clean.
So what is a smart shopper to do amidst this Earth Day green marketing blitz? Embrace this shift in the market and empower yourself even more. Find out what really goes into your favorite products. Learn which companies really rate best on environmental performance. Demand full disclosure - not pretty green packaging - from the companies you support with your hard earned money.
And maybe - at least for Earth Week - ask yourself if you can actually NOT buy a product you are considering. Can you make your own drain declogger (just baking soda and vinegar) rather than buying a toxic chemical? Or eliminate air fresheners all together (by just opening windows!) Or give up deodorant? Okay, scratch that. I don’t want you to lose all your friends:)
And finally, if you really want to help the environment, we all need to work for smarter government policies on climate change, pollution prevention, green chemistry, and product regulation to eliminate hazards before they are created. We need to both change our light bulbs and our legislation this year.
Every year on April 15th, Americans are reminded of a passion that literally helped found our nation: our collective distaste for taxes. But with our government so clearly in need of funds to address major infrastructure, education, health, social, and environmental concerns — I am not opposing taxes, but rather joining a growing group of people wondering if we are just taxing the wrong things.
Why do we tax the things we like and want more of: income, profits, sales of products, etc.? Shouldn’t we instead be taxing things we don’t like and want to incentivize people to reduce: pollution, carbon emissions, inefficient use of resources, etc.?
As we have been studying food recently, what about taxing junk food? Or ingredients of concern like sugar and high fructose corn syrup in food products?
I spoke on a panel at the Green:Net 2009 conference yesterday in San Francisco. The panelists presented a number of very interesting projects focused on delivering and sharing environmental information, and more importantly, on trying to support environmental change through online and mobile tools.
Some interesting lessons from the panel:
Information needs to be in the right tone. Doom and gloom doesn’t work. Neither do celebrity spokespeople.
Surprises and optimistic innovations are compelling.
People like to compare themselves to their friends. So fun competitions can be really effective.
Rewarding people with social “status” online can also be very compelling.
People like to save money and save time.
Our moderator - Alexis Madrigal of Wired.com - pushed the panel on how we can move beyond just presenting information to actually supporting behavioral change. My response was captured by an intrepid video blogger.
Bottom line: people often care first and foremost about the health of their families. So providing compelling health information is often a great strategy for connecting to broader environmental and social issues. And continuously providing answers to actual questions, or solutions to pain points, is critical to getting people to use our information.
One of the things we are also working on - and which we would love your feedback on - is how to deliver the right information, in the right form, at the right moment in your decision-making processes. We are currently working to refine our ratings and our web and mobile apps to be simpler and more closely integrated with the decisions you make everyday.
What recommendations would you make for helping GoodGuide provide better information to support your decision-making?
Or put another way, if you could only have one sip of information from GoodGuide - rather than drinking from the firehose we currently offer - what would it be?
File this under “Ironies of the Global Economy.” We just learned that Chinese Supermarkets are removing Johnson & Johnson baby shampoo from their shelves based on a recent report from the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics that found 1,4-Dioxane and formaldehyde in some baby shampoos and bubble bath products. The US Department of Health and Human Services “considers 1,4-dioxane as reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen.”
“We have to be responsible to consumers and suspend sales of these products until they are proved safe,” said Gan Pingzhong, quality supervision department manager of Nonggongshang, a retailer with 3,500 stores in China.
Back home in the US, the FDA:
“has not established or recommended a specific limit on the level of 1,4-dioxane in cosmetics.”
And Johnson & Johnson asserts that these are only trace quantities of 1,4-Dioxane, so all of their products are safe.
Nonetheless, stores in Taiwan and Vietnam were also pulling Johnson’s baby shampoo from their shelves. And the Chinese government announced that they will test these products for their safety.
By Dara O'Rourke, March 18, 2009 · Posted under Health Issues
As Country of Origin Labeling (COOL) labels show up in grocery stores, we are learning that approximately 80% of our seafood, 90% of lamb and mutton, 30% of fresh fruits and nuts, and 13% of vegetables are imported from around the world. The top 10 countries importing food and beverages into the U.S. include: Canada, Mexico, China, Brazil, Australia, Indonesia, Chile, New Zealand, Colombia and the European Union.
Developing countries such as Mexico and China are increasingly important in our food supply. Food imports from China into the U.S. have quadrupled over the last decade. China is now our number one country for importing prepared/preserved fruits, number two for prepared/preserved vegetables, and number four for fresh or frozen vegetables. China also is the number one producer of farmed fish and shellfish in the world, and the number one supplier of apple juice.
China supplies 80 percent of the world’s ascorbic acid– vitamin C – one-third of the world’s vitamin A, much of the supply of vitamin B-12, and many health-food supplements, such as lysine. Perhaps most surprising, a growing percentage of imported “organic” foods are now coming from China as well. So my daughter’s lunch of fish sticks, crackers, a fruit snack, apple juice, and a vitamin could all be from China. But is her food safe?
My daughter Minju has a peanut allergy. So, my wife and I are used to reading labels to avoid products with peanuts. But over the last month, all of America has come to fear and avoid peanuts as nine people have died and almost 700 have been sickened by salmonella contamination that led to recalls of almost 3,000 different food products. This even hit us at GoodGuide when our team’s beloved Clif Bars were recalled.
The peanut scandal follows closely on the heels of several other food safety crises: melamine recently showed up in baby formula, E. coli was found in bagged spinach, and an outbreak of salmonella occurred in chili peppers. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, each year an estimated 76 million people in the U.S. contract a food borne illness, leading to 5,000 deaths.
But even if we can avoid these contamination outbreaks, it turns out, there are a range of other serious issues to worry about with food. I think of myself as a fairly knowledgeable, healthy eater. But I was shocked when we began our research on food products and found out what’s actually in the food we eat. It turns out that when I pack my daughter’s “healthy” afternoon snack of a juice box and a fruit snack, I’m really feeding her two desserts filled with high fructose corn syrup, added sugars, and artificial colors. Some juices have more sugar than a can of soda!
Disclaimer: While GoodGuide strives for accuracy and completeness, the GoodGuide site, and all data on it, is intended solely for informational use. Do not use this site for medical purposes, and consult your physician if you have any condition or allergy or other medical issue relating to products and their ingredients.
