Green branding and misleading sustainability claims by companies, institutions, or policies.
Fair Trade, organic certification, Deforestation-free – ethical labels encode anti-capitalist longing into product entries, reducing the “right” choice to an illusion that perpetuates the system. The way forward lies in questioning the production system, not filling a more ethical trolley.
When we think of Monsanto, it is easy to associate the company with the health risks of genetically modified (GM) foods. However, “Empire of Seeds” by Bart J. Elmore, a US scholar of environmental history, shows that the influence of agricultural capital—epitomised by Monsanto—on the human food system is actually…
On 17 July, on the eve of the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, several international organisations launched an initiative called “Kick Big Soda Out of Sport”, declaring war on the world’s largest soft drink producers, including Coca-Cola. The initiative claims that “Big Soda”—represented by industry giants like Coca-Cola and Pepsi—uses…
Imagine the vegetables on your plate didn’t come from a farmer with mud-stained hands working in a field, but were instead a technological marvel grown inside a vertical farming tower made of metal and plastic. How would you react? While in Berlin in 2018, I was captivated by the vertical…
Twenty hours later, I finally set foot on the thick blankets of snow in Lapland, northern Sweden. It was seven o’clock in the morning, and the dawn had not yet fully broken over Jokkmokk; however, the light reflecting off the brilliant white snow was enough to reveal the silhouettes of…
From Missouri’s $140 million-plus grain fraud to India’s organic cotton supply chain, a ‘pay-for-certification’ model and untraceable cross-border production chains have left the organic label repeatedly failing at multiple stages.
