By Posted on Posted in Energy & Sustainability, Shel's Personal Life, Uncategorized Tagged with , , , ,

If you think we in the Green movement tend to take ourselves waaaay too seriously, here’s a bit of comic relief.

Dilbert creator Scott Adams describes with excruciating humor all the missteps in building a Green home.

I can relate. In my own Greener home adventures, we’ve discovered…

  • Solar panels without hinges cost A LOT of money to take down and put back up again when you need a new roof.
  • Tax credits are available for new roofs that keep your house cooler in the summer, even if you don’t use an air conditioner. But they don’t apply to roofs that keep you nice and toasty warm in the winter, even if you live in COLD New England.
  • Because of stress from extreme temperature variations, solar water tanks wear out in about half the time of conventional tanks—but not so fast that they’re still under warranty. Right about the time that the savings had paid for the unit.
  • Just because you want to go Green doesn’t mean it will be easy. When our furnace went, we couldn’t justify the cost of geothermal, and ended up replacing our oil-burning furnace with…another, more efficient, oil-burning furnace. Sigh!

    In an ideal world, we’d be able to afford, and justify, the $50,000 superinsulated roof, the geothermal heater, jacking up the R value on our 1743 farmhouse to the point where we had essentially no heating bill…but that’s not the world we live in. We did put in both solar hot water and photovoltaic systems years ago, but we’re a long way from feeling or being energy self-sufficient, and the capital costs were high.

    Am I sorry we took these expensive Green initiatives? Not at all. Do I feel we could have been better shoppers if we’d been more informed? You betcha.

    And do I want incentives to bring the prices down and the reliability up throughout society, especially for those least able to afford a large capital investment with a sometimes dubious payback? Absolutely.

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    By Posted on Posted in Shel's Personal Life

    Heck, I’d settle for two days a week as productive as today. I’d be soooo grateful–and so accomplished! Wrote a long blog on public transit, an article about Green marketing, a much-improved of the query letter I hope will launch my syndicated Green and Profitable column, created a new questionnaire for book consulting clients, and critiqued a client’s book proposal (I don’t normally do ANY client work on weekends, but this had a deadline of tomorrow AM and I was off all day Friday speaking at Boston Greenfest), and managed to deal with 150 or so e-mails.

    And…shelled a bunch of our garden edemame (tender young soybeans), cooked a three-course dinner of mostly garden veggies, made a batch of tomato sauce, hiked for half an hour between rainstorms, did a load each of laundry and dishes plus hand-washed all the pots and wooden stuff. Also got in some fun time with Dina and a bit of reading.

    And now I just wrote this blog, just reflecting on the wonder of it all.

    I have two more hours left, probably, before I crash. Going to try to get through another 100 or so emails and then five miles on the exercise bike with Barbara Kingsolver’s novel, “Lacuna.” And then a well-earned rest.

    All this while everybody’s complaining that Mercury is in retrograde and they can’t get anything done.

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    By Posted on Posted in Demographics/Psychographics, Energy & Sustainability, Shel's Personal Life, travel Tagged with , , , , ,

    Yesterday’s postal mail brought an invitation by the Massachusetts Department of Transportation to survey our driving habits.

    I live in a rural area, along a state highway but between two college towns. Green as I’d love to be, I go most places by car. Occasionally, I’ll have enough time to bike to Northampton or Amherst, but it’s about 50 minutes each direction, and that’s a big chunk out of my day. It’s also not a very pleasant ride, along a busy, very hilly highway with lots of curves and potholes and big stretches without a shoulder.

    I’m a lifelong fan and USER of public transportation. Growing up in New York City, I was eight years old when I switched from the school bus to the public bus—and that was with a transfer. I’ll often take buses instead of driving to Boston or New York (and I’ve actually booked Amtrak for my next trip to Washington). When I travel out of my area, I rarely rent a car unless the destination city is the start of an extended driving trip. If I’m just staying locally, I use buses, trams and subways (and the occasional taxi.

    There’s a local bus that runs past my house. But even though I’m a public transit guy, I’ve lived here 12 years and have never taken it. Why? Because it’s set up to fail. The local transit authority, in its wisdom, runs full-size coaches three times a day in from Northampton to South Hadley and twice a day back to Northampton. I have lots of reasons to go to Northampton, but I can’t do it on the bus. The first trip to Northampton that passes my house arrives at 5:30; the last bus back departs Northampton at 5:35. So that leaves five minutes, after business hours, to do my business. Ha, ha.

    If I happened to want to go the other way, I could have a whole hour in South Hadley, between 5:05 and 6:05 p.m. Whoopie! Oh yeah, I could also arrive at Mount Holyoke at 8 a.m., and if I happened to somehow discover nine hours of things to do in sleepy South Hadley, I could catch the 5:05 back home. Thanks a lot.

    I can see these rare buses go by my house, and they’re usually very uncrowded. What a surprise! Set up a bus service to fail, and then complain that nobody takes the bus.

    But how’s this: what if instead of a 40-passenger coach scheduled as to be unusable, there was a 10-passenger van or minibus, going, say, every two hours. Labor cost would be higher, as a driver would have to be diverted from a more popular route. But the other costs of operation, such as fuel, would be sharply less for each run. And my whole family would probably use the bus several times a week, especially if the route were extended three miles past Mount Holyoke to the high school my son attends, at the beginning and end of the school day. Probably so would a number of other people. Maybe enough to make the route viable.

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    By Posted on Posted in Energy & Sustainability, General Commentary, International Association of Green Marketers Tagged with , , , ,

    You’ve all heard, “Necessity is the Mother of Invention.” Well, perhaps that’s true. But another parent might be frustration: wanting to do something better, more easily, faster than you currently can.

    Yes, some products are developed to fill a need we haven’t known we had. Advances in portable technology, from the beach transistor radio and Sony Walkman to smart phones and PDAs, have often come up to create whole new markets once we realized that these devices we never had were indispensable. Ditto with kitchen technology improvements, like the microwave oven (I still don’t have one of those, by the way). Maybe we could call this “visionary innovation.” A lot of the really big sweeping changes come from these types of innovations: telephones, personal computers, solar collectors, bicycles…

    But other innovations clearly arise because someone got frustrated by the limitations of what existed. Thomas Edison went through 10,000 experiments before he could develop a workable light bulb. Would he have had the patience for that long quest if he hadn’t felt frustrated that the dark hours were so unproductive? Certainly the idea of lighting a room has existed since the discovery of fire, thousands of years ago. But the need for better lighting became much more acute as the 19th century brought not only the Industrial Revolution (with big dark factory spaces to be illuminated) but also a mass culture that began to read actively.

    Look at Google: Existing web search tools were very frustrating in the mid-1990s. To completely change the paradigm of how material was scanned by searchbots in order to achieve not only faster and more accurate searches but also a much cleaner interface was likely a response to the clumsiness of Yahoo and Alta Vista at the time.

    I’m not an inventor, but I am an innovator. A few years ago, I registered some domains for what I thought was a very cool concept: Enter a budget for airfare, enter available departure and return dates (and how much latitude you had with each of those), possible departure airports, choose domestic or international, and have the site spit back suggestions for actual trips you could book (I remember that one of the domains was wherecanifly.com). This came directly out of my frustration trying to plan a trip without having a clear destination and having to laboriously enter itinerary after itinerary.

    I still think it’s a brilliant idea, and one that would be easy to fund with venture capital, advertising, and commissions on travel services. But programmers I talked to told me that was a lot harder to engineer than it seemed. After a year of not finding anyone willing to run with it, I let those domains expire. (Anyone want to run with this, talk to me about being your marketing director 🙂 ).

    People like R. Buckminster Fuller and Amory Lovins seem to have an almost magical ability to fuse the visionary and the frustrated; they harness their frustrations not for the obvious incremental solution, but for something new and deep and very exciting—and they also have a certain inventor’s ADD. The present is never enough for them; they’re always on a quest for something new and strange and wonderful

    Both Fuller and Lovins had an impact in industry after industry—reinventing construction, transportation, industrial manufacturing…whatever struck them as in need of improvement.

    Right now, I’m in the process of launching the International Association of Earth-Conscious Marketers: a trade association for Green marketers. I hope that what comes out of this will also be a fusion of the best in these twin fathers of innovation.

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    By Posted on Posted in Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Marketing Trends/News, Uncategorized Tagged with ,

    A between-issues special edition of Shel Horowitz’s Clean and Green Marketing Newsletter.

    Contents:
    1. A Concentrated Dose of Marcia Yudkin, Marketing Genius
    2. Tobri: A New Social Network from Ken McArthur
    3. Communication is a Lot More Than Words: Sharon Sayler’s New Book
    4. PS – Say hi at Boston Greenfest

    Marcia Yudkin is proof that you can be an introvert and still be a very successful marketer. She’s also one of the most ethical people I know.

    Join Marcia and me on a Special Interview Just for My Readers: “Top Ten Must-Know Principles
    of Marketing Psychology.” You will NOT want to miss this one! This coming Monday, August 23, Noon Eastern/9 a.m. Pacific.

    Click here to register. I’ll send a replay link if you can’t be on the live call—but if you can, I suggest calling in.

    She and I go back a long time. In the 1980s, when she had recently left a teaching position at Smith College to go out on her own as a freelance writer and editor, and my business was still a typing and editing service, she used to freelance for me. And I knew any editing project I gave her would be done beautifully, turned in ahead of deadline, and add to my standing with my clients. I also knew any article with her byline in a local magazine was going to be a compelling read. Then she moved to Boston and I lost track of her for a few years.

    In the 1990s, both she and I independently turned our attention to marketing, and we independently discovered the Internet. I rediscovered her back in the days when I still used an AOL account, so that puts it in 1994 or 1995. By then, I believe she’d already released at least a few of her great books, like Six Steps to Free Publicity and Persuading on Paper. And had begun to build a reputation as a marketer’s marketer: someone who could see through what you were actually saying to what you were trying to say, and show you how to say it a whole lot better—without hype or exaggeration. Then she moved back to the area and our paths would cross again. A couple of years ago, I invited her to join with another friend and me in a Mastermind group, and since then, I’ve benefited enormously from her critiques and suggestions on my own projects.

    Marcia’s weekly Marketing Minute and occasional Name Tales (product and company naming stories) have been brightening my e-mail box all the way back to 1998. She was one of the first people with a folder in my Marketing Geniuses file, where I keep many of her back issues. And she’s one of a very few newsletter publishers who continue to provide value to me many years after I subscribed. (My typical tenure as a subscriber is somewhere between six months and two years).

    The point I’m making is that Marcia is someone well worth paying attention to. As a trend watcher, a copywriter, a marketing consultant, and one of the world’s leading experts on choosing great product and company names, Marcia has a tremendous reservoir of wisdom behind her shy, reclusive outer shell.

    Marcia just spent some serious time organizing the best of her Marketing Minute how-tos and think pieces into a series of five books and 10 audios called the Marketing Insight Guides: a book and two audios each on…

  • Book 1: Persuading People to Buy: Insights on Marketing Psychology That
    Pay Off for Your Company, Professional Practice, or Nonprofit Organization
  • Book 2: Meatier Marketing Copy: Insights on Copywriting That Generates
    Leads and Sparks Sales
  • Book 3: Strategic Marketing: Insights on Setting Smart Directions for
    Your Business
  • Book 4: Publicity Tactics: Insights on Creating Lucrative Media Buzz
  • Book 5: The Marketing Attitude: Insights That Help You Build a Worthy
    Business

    • The books average about 75 articles each, and each 2-CD pair averages 95. In other words, there are a bunch on the audio that you won’t find in the books. So you don’t feel overwhelmed, she’ll be delivering them once a month for five months.

    And even though I read all of these in the original as she wrote them, I intend to spend some serious time with them again, now that they’ve been thematically organized. That will be time very well spent!

    And Marcia asked me if I’d be one of only 12 affiliates selected to pre-announce this collection, ahead of her remaining affiliates. She’s also giving special pricing right now. Through the end of August, you can grab this treasure trove of marketing wisdom for just $99; the final price will be $199, so this is definitely a deal. It works out to about 21 cents an article. I dare you to find so much value anywhere else for 21 cents! Yes, this is an affiliate link.

    2. Tobri: A New Social Network from Ken McArthur

    Ken McArthur has a new beta social media site for making great connections. And because he’s Ken McArthur of JV Alert, author of a great book on impact, and he has a history of pulling together incredible people who need to know each other (and helping them consummate amazing partnership deals)—I’ve signed up because I know it’ll be good. Even though I can’t really keep up with the social media I’m already involved with; for Ken, I’ll make an exception. Check out the video and connect with
    me there. I’d love to have you in my network!

    https://shelhorowitz.com/go/tobri (This is an affiliate link.)

    It doesn’t cost a cent and there are some amazing people in there. Lots of buzz on this one!

    3. Communication is a Lot More Than Words: Sharon Sayler’s New Book

    You’ve probably heard that in face-to-face communication, the words only account for about 7 percent of the message received. Body language, tone of voice, facial expressions and the like account for the lion’s share. (This is why it’s so easy to have misunderstandings online; you don’t have all those nonverbal cues so it’s very easy to misinterpret the real message.)

    The good news is that my friend Sharon Sayler has an excellent roadmap for you, so you can navigate the unsaid meanings and get to the heart of things—making friends and making deals along the way. And the better news: she’ll give you a free chapter plus a special report, How to Avoid the 3 Biggest Body Language Mistakes – in Under 10 Minutes. (This is not an affiliate link.) The book is called What Your Body Says, and I found it full of great insights. If you actually buy the book, you get ten nice bonuses from some of the most respected people in self-help, including a whole year’s access to Sharon’s private membership site.

    4. P.S. Say Hi at Boston Greenfest

    If you’re attending Boston Greenfest on Friday (August 20), I’m speaking from 1-1:25 on “Communicate the Value in Your Values.” Come say hi while I’m signing books afterward, and get your very own autographed copy.

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    By Posted on Posted in Politics

    While I am not particularly a fan of this presidency, and it’s easy to dwell on all that is NOT being done or being done wrong, it is good to have https://obamaachievements.com/ a solid list of 400 achievements, compiled by a Twitterer names Shoq, to look on and remember how much better things are than they would have been if the election had gone the other way. I was particularly gratified to click on the environmental/energy category and see a very long list. Especially as I’ve been quite critical of some of his non-progress on those issues.

    People need to look at this list when thinking about what party they’ll support in November.

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    By Posted on Posted in Blog Tour, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Networking, People Helping People, Web 2.0/Social Media Tagged with , ,

    I’ve just signed up for the Ultimate Blog Challenge (Twitter hashtag #blogboost), which means a commitment to add ten posts between now and the end of the month. Especially nuts because I’m speaking in Boston tomorrow and probably won’t even get on the computer. Fortunately, I happen to have one post already scheduled.

    I’ll be honest. Despite the many benefits of participation (increased visibility, exposure to other people’s networks, and of course a nice boost in the search engines, etc.)—the main reason I’m doing this is because Michelle Shaeffer, a/k/a SmallBizMuse is one of the organizers (along with Michele Scism, who I hadn’t known before, but who seems to offer a lot of useful resources for solopreneurs). She’s been my Virtual Assistant for something like eleven years, and I’ve taken a sort of nachas (Yiddish word meaning pride in the accomplishments of one’s family) in watching her develop some marketing chops of her own, and a dedicated fan base, over the last year or two. She has 4989 followers on Twitter! All organically acquired, as far as I know; I only have 3395.

    So my joining her blog challenge is as much a public thank-you for all she’s done for me these last 11 years as anything else. You, of course, will have different reasons for signing up.

    Of course, when she’s rich and famous, I’ll probably have to go out and find a new Virtual Assistant. So it goes.

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    By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Energy & Sustainability, Frugality/Frugal Fun, People Helping People, poverty, Shel's Personal Life Tagged with , , ,

    This time of year, we spend an astonishing amount of time dealing with food: harvesting from our garden, making salads, cooking, preserving, giving or occasionally selling surplus…but it is SO worth it!

    Long before we had a garden of our own, I’ve been an advocate of local community food self-sufficiency. Not that a neighborhood or village would grow all its own food, but even the most urban could grow some vegetables and herbs, some berries.

    Food is a basic necessity, and as such should be a right (ditto for drinkable water and health care, among other things). But in many poor communities, there are few gardens and not even any supermarkets. Rooftops, vacant lots, and even windowsills could change this—and in the process, empower residents, break down barriers, form friendships, save people money…and introduce folks to the absolute joy of eating fresh organic produce grown right where you are.

    Yesterday, I made a batch of pure tomato sauce: no oil, no water, no herbs, no onions or garlic, just fresh ripe garden tomatoes, cooked in their own juice for several hours, until the sauce was about a third of the original volume, and had a flavor so royally rich you’d think it was made of 24-karat gold. Today, it was Dina’s night to cook. Earlier today, she went and got a couple of pounds of green beans out of the garden (along with another 40 full-size and 125 cherry tomatoes, enough corn for our lunch, celery, eggplant, edemame, zucchini, and I forget what else). She cooked the beans lightly for a few minutes in my super-intense tomato sauce and served them over couscous. WOW! Served with a salad of our own cucumbers and tomatoes and lettuce from our local CSA farm, plus some Turkish olives and feta cheese, it was a fabulous dinner.

    Today, I made another batch of that good sauce (most of which we’re freezing for the winter), a batch of zucchini pickles, and a batch of dried tomatoes. Dina processed the leeks for freezing. I confess, we’re putting in a couple of hours a day. It really helps that I work at home and that Dina doesn’t have to go teach at the university in the summer. Seems like every break I take from the computer I am dealing with food. But come January, when the produce you can buy is almost inedible, we will pull some of our bounty from the freezer or from the dried stash in the pantry, and we will enjoy locally grown meals almost as good as those we’re feasting on now.

    It’s an experience that should be shared widely. I feel very sorry for those people who’ve never had a REAL fresh tomato. Comparing it to a supermarket tomato is like comparing a perfectly aged French triple-cream gourmet cheese with Velveeta.

    And I feel grateful not only to live in a place where we can have a garden, but in a time when consciousness of local organic and fresh foods is high, and where food is helping people know their neighbors and boost their nutrition.

    Yes, a tomato can change the world.

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    By Posted on Posted in censorship, Diversity, Ethics in Government, General Commentary, Politics, propaganda Tagged with , , , , ,

    Came across this article, “Why Are The Feds Banning E-Readers?” by Pat Archbold, on National Catholic Register:

    Sometimes the federal government does something so laughably moronic, that one has to stop and ask the question “Are they really that dumb or is something else going on?”

    Here is the setup. Recently a number of universities around the country decided to take a look at using some modern technology in the classroom in an effort to save money. These universities took part in an experimental program to allow students to use the Amazon Kindle for textbooks. As you know, many people now use e-readers like the Kindle or the Nook as a replacement for traditional printed books. There are many reasons for this including cost, environmental impact, and convenience. Further, anyone who has gone to college understands the high cost of textbooks and would likely support any way to reduce this large expense.

    Here is the pathetic punchline. For conducting this experiment with the Kindle, Obama’s Department of Justice threatened legal action against the universities. The ridiculous contention of the Obama administration is that the Kindle and e-readers violate the Americans With Disabilities Act. Why? Because the blind can’t easily use them.

    Now the first thing that would pop into the minds of anybody with a third grade education and that does not work for the government is this simple question. If e-readers discriminate against the blind, do not traditional textbooks discriminate equally? The obvious answer is yes.

    The obvious solution, in my mind, is to require the universities to offer a suitable alternative for blind and visually impaired users—NOT to prohibit the devices entirely. E-book texts are easily converted to voice, so the only issue is giving those who don’t see a way to navigate into the right e-book.

    But his article, and the comments it drew, amazed me with their various “evil conspiracy” theories. Yes, there were some that argued rationally about the legitimate difficulties blind users have with these devices (and pointing out that they have much more difficulty with a printed book). But there were also a number of comments speculating that this is a way for the Obama administration to control dissent and silence conservative voices.

    My question to them: what have you been smoking?

    Here’s Archbold:

    I posit another and perhaps more nefarious reason. I think that the federal government is adamantly opposed to the use of e-readers as an alternative to textbooks for fear of loss of control. This loss of control is not so much at the university level but at much younger levels. The universities just happened to be the first ones to try.

    Here’s one of the comments, from “Frank”:

    A great deal of control over curriculum nationwide is exerted through textbook control. Education is critical to progressives. Remember, those who control education, control the culture. (Now , think of Obama’s childhood development, i.e. Indonesian grade school;, contact with Frank Mitchell Davis during high school years;, professors at Occidental College and Columbia University;, Alinsky acolytes in Chicago; social/political training in Hyde Park, Chicago South Side; Chicago political cauldron. Put it all together, what else can you expect but what we have experienced since January 20, 2009?)

    To me, the ruling that e-readers are out of compliance with ADA—and I speak as a disability advocate who served on my city’s official Disability Awareness committee for six years—is nothing more than the typical heavy-handed over-response of large government entities. No malfeasance, just bureaucratic inability to see past a one-size-fits-all solution. It’s the same mentality that, here in Massachusetts under Massachusetts General Law Chapter 40B, allows developers to ram through inappropriate and out-of-character housing projects that violate local zoning, in the name of increasing the ratio of affordable housing. Affordable housing is a worthy goal, and I spent about ten years doing a lot of volunteer work to address that issue—but 40B is a cannon shot fired against a mosquito: the wrong tool, with lots of unintended and undesirable consequences.

    The same mentality that thinks every road improvement—even our local bikeway—has to include over-widening, over-straightening, and often removing trees, stone walls, and other vital features.

    Big governments are slow and clumsy creatures with limited intelligence, even when they’re headed by very smart people. Over time, we as a society will realize that conditions vary in different locations, and one size really fits no one at all, only breeds resentment.

    Progressives can make common cause with the Right on this issue: local control is the preferred alternative whenever practical.

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    By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Corporate Social Responsibility, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, poverty, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , ,

    Editor’s Note: Sometimes I like to post things to stimulate controversy, and thus I’m running this guest post by Alexis Bonari, critiquing one of the sacred cows of the sustainability movement: fair trade certification.

    From my own point of view as a consumer, I look to Fair Trade certification for many products, especially chocolate. I am all-too-aware of the use of child slaves to harvest cacao, particularly in the Ivory Coast, and as a lover of chocolate, I don’t want to be a party to that. Fair Trade labeling is my assurance that the cacao was grown honestly.

    I also disagree with Bonari’s two points:

    First, there’s nothing, to my mind, inherently evil about mechanized farming, as long as it’s done sustainably. Many Fair Trade products are also organic, and that’s a big step in the right direction. Systemically, of course, we should be looking at how we power our tractors and all the rest of it. And we can all look for ways to increase our “locavore” quotient by consuming products (including food) created locally. But I do believe there is a place for imports in the mix, and in fact, in my book, Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green, the section on “Local as Green” is followed immediately by one called “Global as Green.”

    And second, Far Trade (while far from perfect) certainly does provide a wedge against poverty. Farmers in Fair Trade co-ops are demonstrably better off than most who sell through conventional channels and who have no choice but to accept a pathetically low bid. Remember, too, that economic leverage varies a lot from country to country, and differences can be orders of magnitude. There are many parts of the world where an income of $25 or $50 a day puts someone in the upper half of the population, but it may only cost a few cents to cook a meal.

    I’ll turn the floor over to Alexis now—but I’d love to know your thoughts. Please add your comment below.
    —Shel Horowitz

    Marketing Honesty: Is Fair Trade Really a Fair Deal?

    By Alexis Bonari

    The Fair Trade label has become a marketing boon for many companies. Soon, even Nestlé’s Kit Kat bar will be made from Fair Trade sources.

    Essentially, the term Fair Trade refers to the following business model: companies pay craftsmen and farmers in developing countries an increased wage for goods that are traditionally produced in that region. These goods are produced with an eye to minimal environmental impact. Examples of Fair Trade goods are: bananas, honey, cotton, wine, handcrafts, coffee, sugar, and tea. As of 2008, the annual amount of revenue generated by Fair Trade goods amounted to approximately US$4.08 billion worldwide.

    While the popularity of Fair Trade goods is almost certainly a byproduct of good intentions on the part of consumers, is there a downside to the Fair Trade industry?

    The problem is twofold:

    1. Unsustainable Markets
    While incentivizing the production of local crops and handcrafts may temporarily short-circuit the cycle of poverty in certain communities, it does nothing to address the problem of supply and demand. First world countries lead the global economic market by producing technology and mass-produced products. India, and other developing countries experiencing economic growth, are educating their people and encouraging them to adopt mechanized means of production and farming.

    Fair Trade workers are being incentivized to continue producing the very same products that are keeping them in poverty. A comprehensive solution would encourage education and new business ventures.

    2. Perpetuation of a Toxic Cycle
    Simply put, Fair Trade policies perpetuate a system that denies the citizens of developing countries control over their own businesses. Under the banner of Fair Trade, foreign companies are offering them pennies on the dollar that a citizen of the US or a member of the EU would make for the same service.

    Fair Trade is a case of inaccurate marketing. The consumer is convinced that they’re working toward eradicating poverty in the Third World. In reality, Fair Trade could potentially hurt the very people it intends to help.

    Alexis Bonari is a freelance writer and blog junkie. She is a passionate blogger on the topic of education and free college scholarships. In her spare time, she enjoys square-foot gardening, swimming, and avoiding her laptop.

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