IS EVERYTHING REALLY GREEN?
IS EVERYTHING REALLY GREEN?
As the 50th anniversary of Future in Our Hands (FIVH) is coming up this April 25th, it is important to reflect on the current state of our environmental awareness and action. As we navigate through the maze of modern environmental discourse, one glaring issue emerges: the prevalence of greenwashing. Have you noticed that in the past few years everything has become green? Or at least that’s what most corporations would have us believe. While corporations push their “green” initiatives, the reality, as scientists warn, often tells a different story. As engaged and concerned NMBU students, we have been attending events that highlight sustainable businesses and company practices, such as the Future Food Festival and UEAT2024. Through exploring these events, we aim to shed light on how corporations use a green narrative to advertise tvo NMBU students.
FIVH Ås was asked to attend UEAT2024, an event for local high schools, and were one out of three speakers among Bama and the Packaging group, Emballasjeforeningen. Bama is a wholesalers with a dominant market position, and it is mentioned in an article from FIVH that 70% of the market is controlled by BAMA, which is the only way into two out of three grocery giants in Norway. According to SNL they had a total profit of approximately NOK 21.8 billion in 2021. The Packaging group is the interest organization for packaging- manufacturers, -suppliers and -users. We interpreted the main message of Bama and the Packaging Group as them doing everything they can to be sustainable and that packaging is the best (and only!) solution for reducing food waste. Labor exploitation, a recent uncovering from FIVH, and the time before packaging existed were not mentioned. The event happened during school hours, i.e. a free pass for advertising to children and youths.
The future food festival began with an opening on the amazing innovations we have seen in the past. All speakers agreed that production must increase to feed the world, no one suggested that we might distribute food more equitably to avoid a system where nearly 1/3 of food is wasted and 1/3 of the world is overweight. The second day focused on alternative forms of feed for aquaculture. There was an overwhelming agreement that we must remove more biomass from the ecosystem to satisfy these increases in production. One particularly disturbing presentation came from Aker Biomarine, who spent 30 minutes advertising how sustainable they are, without presenting any evidence. A quick google search reveals that Krill populations have declined by 75% in the past 40 years, and Green Peace recently released a report detailing how companies like Aker Biomarine are putting entire food webs at risk.
How can it be that companies can come into centers of education and shed green light on their practices? We must ask if infinite growth always is the best? And when we say “the best” do we mean the best for all life on earth or the best for the richest parts of the world? How can we expect our society to make the truly dramatic shifts required to become sustainable when we cannot seem to admit the enormity of the problem? With this, we hold the future in our hands, so it is our responsibility to raise our voices when profit threatens life on eath.
Did reading this make you want to contribute? Click the link https://www.framtiden.no/kampanjer/tomat and sign if you don’t want fruit and vegetables made under illegal and inadequate conditions.
