The High Cost Of Responsible Living

The comic... it's hideous.

LOL, this one was great. It's obviously in jest, and it echoes Kermit the Frog's lament: "It's not easy being green."

The sweatshop clothing thing just kills me. Aside from American Apparel and the occasional hemp shop, it's virtually impossible to get anything that wasn't made virtually through indentured servitude (despite how certain apparel manufacturers say they inspect factories).

Yes, I also realize that coffee and chocolate and stuff like my iPod to my thermostat are all made under similar conditions. Sigh. It's depressing.

With my serial number, I can find out that my PowerBook was the tenth laptop built on May 16, 2005 at Apple's factory 4H in China. That doesn't mean it wasn't made by someone working 16-hour shifts to meet ridiculous quotas under poor conditions, but at least I can track where it came from. All products (including food) should have explicit tracking information easily available to consumers.

I remember the the Warner Bros/Bugs Bunny cartoon, where those two uber-polite chipmunks get lost in a canning factory because a farmer and then a big truck took "their" vegetables and see firsthand the automated processing of food to the "Funny Farm" theme music.
Do we even know where our food comes from anymore. Do we even know what we are eating sometimes? One of the things I took away from reading "Diet for a New America" by John Robbins, were the ramifications and the ripple effect that even our smallest consumer choices have. Just because I am conscious of it though, makes me no less guilty, I am part of the problem and it is a source of inner conflict, but I don't know how else to do it, short of a hut in the woods. Time sheets in the factories in the third world countries account for the workers time down to the minutes and seconds. It's maximum utiliazation of labor. Unfortunately, being aware of it, and doing something to change it, I'm not even sure where to begin. it IS more expensive and takes more effort to eat healthy or make responsible consumer decisions. That's not an accident. That's why companies have slick ad agencies.
If we knew where most (all) of the stuff we buy and eat was made, we'd all start weaving and planting our own stuff. I have to put out of my mind the fact that the clothes I'm wearing were made in a shop in Indonesia and that the woman who made them can probably barely feed her kids and that in a year she will have even less when the company packs up and moves on to an even cheaper labor supply. Leaving her village deserted and polluted. And I don't have any problem spending more on a product that is more responsibly made...but where are those products?

Oh for gosh sakes, it's just a comic. It's true that being green costs a bit more, and it can be tough at times to meet those extra charges. What's wrong with saying that?

Sure, being green also cuts other costs in my life, so it all balances out in the end - but, that's not the point of the comic, b/c it's not terribly funny. I'm sure if the author was writing a bonafide article on shopping green, she'd get to the further cost-benefit analysis. But right now, it's just a comic - so what's the big deal? It's not even an editorial comic for heaven's sake, making a point, it's just a little slice-of-life depiction.

One of the most frustrating things is that companies are protected under the laws of competition from making the contents of their product public (except for food). Normally, this isn't a problem, but then you have cases like this one where kids' lunchboxes are full of lead, but the Consumer Product Safety Commission approves them but won't release their findings when questioned because the companies are protected. Then there's stuff like many products in dollar stores or Honest Ed's, which are totally unregulated and full of very dangerous stuff like lead (toys, Christmas lights, baking utensils). We need to be able to explicitly track where things we buy come from and how they're made, both on a safety and human resource level.

A positive step toward this is the laser-tagging of fruit. NOW complained about that but I totally disagreed in a letter (halfway down). Most of this information exists and is in a database somewhere, but consumers should be allowed to scan or punch-in a serial number and see how a product originated, if they wish. Companies that irresponsibly don't know what goes on at their sweatshops probably don't know because they know they don't want to know.

It is diffcult for some people to choose the socially and environmentally just products because of income. I think environmental groups sometimes forget that. I love this comic.