Green is not enough
Personally I love shoes and bags as much (and probably more) as the next woman but, despite it being my local supermarket, I couldn’t stir myself to get to Sainsbury’s for Anya Hindmarch’s ‘I’m not a plastic bag’ plastic bag. And although I hate to admit it, it was with some glee that I observed the press digging around to find the negative angle on what should have been a very positive initiative.
And there it was on the front page of the Evening Standard the very afternoon of the day the bags went on sale: ‘I am not an ethical bag.’ It seems, according to the Londoners’ love-to-hate-it daily rag that Hindmarch’s bags were produced in sweatshops in China, had to be transported thousands of miles back to the UK, and commentators are saying that Sainsbury’s has ‘tarnished’ its image when it comes to fair trade (Actually, Justin King has more recently said that the Chinese workers were, in fact paid well by local standards.)
Now, I am experiencing a moral dilemma over this one. I’m not in favour of exploiting workers in any country and love to join in and sneer at those shallow beings who spend their lives queuing up in droves at Primark and putting their names down on waiting lists for Chanel nail polish. But seriously, how else is the environment going to become a sexy cause to support? In the UK we currently get through about 13billion plastic carrier bags every year.
In campaign planning meetings the world over, PRs have been trying to ‘make it fashionable’ to reduce, reuse and recycle (not as easy as it sounds but probably easier than making mortgages or car insurance interesting.) One organisation’s attempt to do this may have been thwarted by bad publicity (we’ll wait and see) but it will serve to remind all of us to always be prepared for the worst when it comes to writing the Q&As for an environmental campaign…