Transforming Cultures

Typically, you hear me railing about inappropriate marketing, particularly to children, but here’s an effort I can get behind. A bunch of farmers of “baby carrots” have gotten together and applied the lessons of junk-food marketing to their tiny carrot offerings. While not perfect, it’s a great start. And if refined, it could play an important role in transforming children’s dietary norms.

What happens when someone tries to green the culture of a movie set? Resistance. A recent talk at the Downtown Film Festival in Los Angeles, brought me together with several cultural pioneers trying to cultivate sustainability near Hollywood: from green movie consultants and school food reformers to an urban homesteading pioneer that grows all of his family’s food in his backyard.

A new social marketing campaign by the American Legacy Foundation shows how zombies—and smoking—are hazardous to your health.

Miami, Florida, recently approved construction of two 50-story electronic billboards designed to market the wares of the consumer society. Forget Times Square, these two towers, if built, would become leading symbols of consumerism and bombard people with ever more encouragement to buy, buy, buy. In fact, it feels like something right out of The Lord of the Rings, but instead of the Towers Orthanc and Mordor, we’re building the Towers of Mindblank and Buymore.

Recently, facing a serious budget deficit, the U.S. Postal Service proposed increasing its delivery rates. But the newly-created Affordable Mail Alliance (AMA) has announced its opposition to raising rates. Why? Because that’ll cost the alliance more to bombard Americans with their billions of pieces of junk mail. I say let’s raise the rates on junk mail, effectively taxing this ecologically destructive form of spamming. Not only will mail recipients and America’s environment benefit but the Postal Service will be able to balance its budget on the backs of the junk mail industry. Sounds like a perfect solution to me.

Good news! The Story of Stuff Project has come out with a new video—this time targeting cosmetics. And better news: the cosmetics industry called it a biased “shockumentary,” which must mean it hit too close to home and they’re concerned it might influence the political debate. Hopefully the industry’s fears will come true and the video will help people push for better regulation on cosmetics while taking off some of the toxic products they currently smear on their bodies.

Eventually, the Global Consumer Economy will self-destruct, as all Ponzi schemes do. But before then, there’s still plenty of room for growth (as long as new joiners don’t ask too many questions). This is especially true in rapidly developing countries like Brazil. In fact, Brazil seems like a great place to grow the consumer dream, whether in the country’s urban jungles or the deepest reaches of the Amazon forests.

There’s a budding trend in the coffee market: coffee made from beans that have worked their way through the bowels of a civet. If unchecked, this could lead to a whole new type of factory farm, the CoCAFO. But acting now might prevent this from ever brewing….

After finally trying FarmVille and the new FrontierVille, I was deeply saddened to imagine the millions of hours a day being squandered growing virtual corn and carrots. But there may be a silver lining: this addictive social game may cultivate a whole new generation of farmers, although only with a bit of help from the inventors of these games….

I was surprised when I first entered Earthaven Ecovillage in North Carolina during a recent weekend and immediately heard the rumbling sound of a tractor [...]