More Proof that Earth Day is a Sham (and so is Earth Month)

Wow! It’s official. Looks like Walmart is taking advantage of participating in Earth Month by selling you a bunch of useless garbage really cool stuff that you can buy to help the planet! If anyone doubts Walmart’s sincerity towards helping the environment, just take a look at a few of these offerings:

• RPET Coca-Cola Branded T-shirts ($7.50) – Wal-Mart has partnered with Coca-Cola to introduce co-branded t-shirts made with RPET, a material manufactured with recycled plastic bottles. Currently available online at Walmart.com/earth.

• Majestic™ Rubber Mulch ($5.47 for a 20 lb. bag) – Made from 100 percent recycled tire rubber, Majestic rubber mulch is ideal for landscaping and covering playgrounds, pools and pond areas. Available in red or brown, the rubber mulch is non-toxic and latex-free, and is a great alternative to traditional mulch for environmentally conscious gardeners.

Yes, environmentalism now comes in Small, Medium and Large. If you don’t want a shirt, you can buy sunshine and clean air inside a 20 lb. bag of rubber. Buy your shirts now to prepare yourself for next year’s Earth Hour!!

Here’s my problem with all of this window dressing: Earth Hour, Earth Day, Earth Month – in aggregate, I think they do more bad than good. The concept behind them is great. Informing people about the environment and pushing them to live greener lives is an admirable aim. But in practice, it’s commercializing environmentalism so that stores like Walmart can take advantage of Joe Consumer; it’s tarnishing the image of what environmentalism means; it’s degrading the “environmentalist” brand name and making it… something else.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 2nd, 2009 at 11:20 pm and is filed under Environment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.