Socially and Environmentally Aware Product Promotion

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Back in the day, manufacturers tried to encourage us to buy their products by promotioning them as ‘new!’ and ‘improved!’, better than the other guy’s ‘ordinary’ whatever-it-is.

They still do this of course, but in these times of social and environmental awareness, it’s no longer enough to push your product as merely superior to others. No, these days you’ve also got to demonstrate your virtue as a ‘responsible’ supplier.

This was brought home to me the other day as I unloaded the shopping when the wife and I got back from the supermarket. Take our Kleenex tissues for instance. The packaging assured us that ‘we want to do our bit to reduce our impact on the planet; our pack is 100% recyclable and we are looking to reduce and reuse as much plastic as we can’. Didn’t stop you from wrapping the twin pack in plastic film though did it?

Then there was our surface cleanser. These days it doesn’t just kill 99.9% of all bacteria, but ‘contains no bleach, no dyes, and is pH neutral’ (whatever the fuck that is’). To top things off, the ‘bottle is made with 50% recycled plastic’. The floor cleaner has its own angle. The container certifies it to be ‘cruelty free’ and ‘vegan’, as does that of the bathroom cleaner, which has the bonus of only containing ‘natural oils’.

Foodstuffs are just the same as well. I was pleased to learn that our ice cream contains ‘sustainably grown, handpicked bourbon vanilla; the container being ‘made with 93% less plastic’. Our ketchup contains ‘no artificial colourings, flavourings, preservatives or thickeners’, and is ‘gluten free, and suitable for vegetarians and vegans’. Well of course.

It turned out that just about every item had some blurb on the front which promoted it on the basis of one or another aspect of ‘responsible’ production. I’m heartened to see that manufacturers are now taking their obligations to both the consumer and to the planet seriously.

Of course, they might actually not give a toss. This could all be just another marketing ploy to make us feel better and more at ease psychologically, and therefore more inclined to buy. It could all be just about that bottom line. No… they couldn’t possibly be THAT cynical.

Could they?

Cheeky Panda Products.

Nominated by : Ron Knee

110 thoughts on “Socially and Environmentally Aware Product Promotion”

    • I wonder if he checked whether the bacon came from free range fed porkers? If he really cared for the environment he’d be a vegan anyway I dare say.

      Should definitely be in ‘The Guinness Book of Cunts’, the fucking twat.

  2. Saving the planet? For what/who? .. billions more future people?

    Noooo, thankew.

    I *would*, technically, like to press a magic button to save the planet, .. ironically the only feasible thing that button could DO to save the planet(from neverending ongoing hypocritical destruction and abuse) would be to disappear the whole fucking lot of us. (I’d still press it, broadly speaking!) (What about the suddenly-abandoned pets or zoo animals & shut-in livestock & other similar inherent complications being the issues f’ me).

    Point of fact : whenever I’ve put the words ‘I don’t care about the environment’ into Google, it always categorises me as some cunt who doesn’t *believe* there’s a climate emergency/apocalypse/armageddon to be worried ABOUT ; … as opposed to being ‘allowed’ to simply *not care* if there is or isn’t one, via misanthropy.

    Plus, of course, the big elephant in the room, in reality .. I will do(or care about) MY bit when every other cunt does their bit too. Globally. From the indifferent Everest-tourists dumping their shit around the Himalayas en masse, to the fucking entire nations of china, india, africa et al.

    As for the nom, specifically. ‘Not yet recycled’ is some duplicitous attempt I’m seeing frequently, to dress-up packaging made from virgin plastics or whatever. It actually shines a light on itself by crowbarring-in the ‘R’ word, putting the future onus on the customer when the company themselves couldn’t be arsed!

    • I completely agree, the elephants in the room are considerable. The stats for pollution and infinite environmental concerns never include any military manoeuvres/training/nutjob invasions whatsoever, yet the powers that land the state of the planet at our feet, put your green bin out etc.. jovial at best

  3. The only thing you need to do to save the planet is get rid of all the 3rd world countries! Imagine if all the n*gnog, spaki’s, Red Sea pedestrians, Singhs and all the vermin vanished, what a wonderful world we could have. No more pollution or vile body odour from these cunts. No noice pollution from their hideous voices and scratter vermin kids.

  4. When I was a kid, you could by biscuits loose in a paper bag, milk came in bottles which were sent back and cleaned at the dairy.
    Butter and cheese was put in greaseproof paper and until recently my medication came in a little brown bottle but now in a cardboard wrapped blister pack.
    The amount of plastic used in everyday packaging is phenomenal and the onus is on us to dispose of it. Supermarkets are some of the biggest offenders, particularly on the fruit and veg front with produce packed in sweaty plastic bags and trays.
    PS apologies for any misspelling, I can only see out of one eye at the moment, a cunt of an insect has bitten the eyelid of the other and it has swollen shut. I look like Quasimodo!

  6. Two things recently that boil my piss. The attached fucking bottle tops, I’m not spaccka I don’t need it attached to the bottle. It gets in the fucking way when you drink, I rip them off in a hate filled rage! The other ridiculous thing, the card and plastic trays for meat at the supermarket. Previously you would just take of the top, and throw the plastic trays in recycling. Now you have to separate the film from said cardboard. This means it all goes into waste. Just so the massive corporation who sold it can virtue signal about cutting down on plastic. I recon the amount of people who can be arsed to separate this plastic from card, to be very low. All in the name of green bolocks, as usual it’s just hipocricy and green washing.

  7. Some cunt in the U.S.put geo tags in ten different sets of recycling he sent away with various different recycling companies , then brought in the local news when eight of the ten ended up at landfill sites.

    Recycling companies started blathering on about stuff ‘not cleaned properly’ being unusable, but the original guy HAD been methodical about that side of things. (vlogging the whole setup, of course 🙄)

    Then the man went back to his life, all chuffed with himself, the news-crew and their faux-outrage went back to theirs, and the slightly embarrassed companies went back to THEIRS, .. and nothing whatsoever changed big picture.(except more fuel/earthly resources had been expended making the clout/ratings-based videos, including whatever goes in to manufacturing geo tags, come to think of it).

    Not all stories have a worthwhile moral. This has been one such. 😄

    (youtube coupla months back)

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