Good vs. Bad

EARTHKEEPERS^™
PHILOSOPHY 

We’re constantly looking for and inventing innovative materials that allow us to reduce our impact on the planet and make better gear. Plastic from recycled soda bottles goes into our breathable linings and durable shoelaces. Coffee grounds find a place in our odor-resistant jackets. Organic cotton grown without toxins makes it into our rugged canvas.

How BP Ultimate Unleaded reduces exhaust emissions

Only a clean engine with the correct fuel and air flow can provide optimised combustion.

With its advanced engine cleaning formulation, new and improved BP Ultimate Unleaded can remove an average 95% of deposits that build up on critical engine components, and can prevent new ones from forming.

A clean engine is a more efficient engine, which in turn produces fewer emissions. And tests in a range of vehicles confirm that using BP Ultimate Unleaded instead of ordinary petrol can significantly reduce the harmful emissions from your car’s exhaust.

The topic I chose to write about this week is eco-promising.  I had not heard of the term eco-promising before taking this class.  For those who are unfamiliar with the term, it is defined according to the Business for Social Responsibility as: the practice of making claims about the environmental attributes of products.  In other words, eco-promising is something that corporations try with their products/services.  This can either be a good thing for their companies, or it can be a bad thing.  Sometimes it can have a negative impact on a companies credibility.  If for instance a company claims that their product is completely sustainable in every aspect of the production process and it is found that some part is in fact not sustainable or is really harming the environment, then that company will lose some of its credibility with consumers.  For example, in my opinion, one of the best eco-promising companies out there is Timberland.  Timberland has started creating in-house eco-labels for their products, and increasing their use of electronic tags embedded into their labels.  By changing these seemingly small practices, they have started to reduce their carbon footprint.  On the other hand, I believe that one of the worst eco-promising companies out there is BP (British Petroleum).  This company claims that they are creating cleaner fuels that both make your engine run "as it was designed to" and are less harmful for the environment.  In my opinion, the simple fact that BP is responsible for the disastrous oil spill in April of 2010 is enough for me not to trust their attempts at cleaner fuel.  For each day that the oil spill went on, 2.5 million gallons were released into the Gulf of Mexico.  Now just imagine how much of an impact that spill and BP's lack of good management had on our already decreasing oil reserves.  I am not one that will be looking to BP for anything to do with improving the environment, because I do not believe they are capable of handling something so important.  I think that when companies eco-promise, they are mainly looking out for their own interests instead of the consumers interests.  I think that it is all about guilting people into spending more money on their products because of their claims to be green.