The Canadian Green Consumer Guide
How You Can Help
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart, Toronto, Canada
Year First Published: {8691 The Canadian Green Consumer Guide CANADIAN GREEN CONSUMER GUIDE How You Can Help McClelland & Stewart Toronto Canada A guide to responsible shopping that won't cost the earth. 1988 1989 164pp BC8691-GreenConsumerGuide.jpg B Book 0-7710-7162-0 TX335.C35 1989 640.73'0971 Subtitled "How You Can Help", The Canadian Green Consumer Guide bills itself as a guide to "responsible shopping that won't cost the earth". Colourful, with lots of illustrations, (in fact, it's visually so "busy" that it's distracting to read) it provides helpful information for concerned consumers on a range of topics. Chapter headings include Food and Drink, Cleaners, Clothing and Toiletries, Gardening, and Travel and Leisure. There are helpful hints on low-impact camping, water-saving toilets, non-toxic cleaners, lawn care, ethical investing, and much else. There are short explanations of some major environmental problems, such as the greenhouse effect and the garbage crisis. Individual products and suppliers are frequently mentioned (especially Loblaws, whose products Pollution Probe is paid to endorse). Adapted by Pollution Probe from a European book by John Elkington and Julia Hailes, the Guide contains useful information for people who are trying to shop in an environmentally conscious way.
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<br>At the same time, the Guide is also deeply flawed, to the point where it may do as much harm as good. It touts the message that environmental problems are the fault of each of us as individuals, and that we can solve them by shopping more wisely. While no one would deny that it is important for us to be more aware and to make changes in our personal lifestyles, it is misleading in the extreme to suggest that this is where most of the problems, or most of the solutions, lie. For example, it's true that we should each try to make less use of private automobiles, but it's also true that if the government were to toughen vehicle emission standards, and if it were to make public transit more convenient and less expensive, it would have more effect than any amount of pleading with individual drivers to drive less. Similarly, it's all very well to urge us to try to avoid buying non-returnable pop bottles, but it would be a lot more effective if their manufacture was simply banned. Many environmental problems have a lot to do with bad policies and harmful structures, and need to be dealt with on the level of public policy. If we live downstream from a company dumping poison in the water (as millions of us do), we'd be a lot further ahead if we were able to get together and exert enough pressure to have those responsible jailed, and have the source cleaned up, than we would be each spending $235 to have our tap water tested, as the Canadian Green Consumer Guide suggests. By publishing a popular book that ignores the need for collective action and reduces environmental issues to individual consumer choices, Pollution Probe has made a contribution that is questionable at best.
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<br>[Abstract by Ulli Diemer] CX3723 1 false true false CX3723.htm [0xc000e04c00 0xc000e9ef00 0xc000f5fd40 0xc0000aa270 0xc0001d56e0 0xc0001d57a0 0xc00021f620 0xc000207dd0 0xc001777650 0xc0005ea630 0xc00063a6c0 0xc00063b470 0xc0006c43f0 0xc00071a9f0 0xc00076ade0 0xc0004f4720 0xc0004f4780 0xc0003dc930 0xc0003f2ed0 0xc0006abfb0 0xc000bbdad0 0xc000bd3c50 0xc000a7e6f0 0xc000ba8cc0 0xc001f792c0 0xc0008d0cc0 0xc000e3e420 0xc0005fc750 0xc001951bc0 0xc001951c20 0xc002852030 0xc00251f350] Cx}
Year Published: 1989
Pages: 164pp ISBN: 0-7710-7162-0
Library of Congress Number: TX335.C35 1989 Dewey: 640.73'0971
Resource Type: Book
Cx Number: CX3723
A guide to responsible shopping that won't cost the earth.
Abstract:
Subtitled "How You Can Help", The Canadian Green Consumer Guide bills itself as a guide to "responsible shopping that won't cost the earth". Colourful, with lots of illustrations, (in fact, it's visually so "busy" that it's distracting to read) it provides helpful information for concerned consumers on a range of topics. Chapter headings include Food and Drink, Cleaners, Clothing and Toiletries, Gardening, and Travel and Leisure. There are helpful hints on low-impact camping, water-saving toilets, non-toxic cleaners, lawn care, ethical investing, and much else. There are short explanations of some major environmental problems, such as the greenhouse effect and the garbage crisis. Individual products and suppliers are frequently mentioned (especially Loblaws, whose products Pollution Probe is paid to endorse). Adapted by Pollution Probe from a European book by John Elkington and Julia Hailes, the Guide contains useful information for people who are trying to shop in an environmentally conscious way.
At the same time, the Guide is also deeply flawed, to the point where it may do as much harm as good. It touts the message that environmental problems are the fault of each of us as individuals, and that we can solve them by shopping more wisely. While no one would deny that it is important for us to be more aware and to make changes in our personal lifestyles, it is misleading in the extreme to suggest that this is where most of the problems, or most of the solutions, lie. For example, it's true that we should each try to make less use of private automobiles, but it's also true that if the government were to toughen vehicle emission standards, and if it were to make public transit more convenient and less expensive, it would have more effect than any amount of pleading with individual drivers to drive less. Similarly, it's all very well to urge us to try to avoid buying non-returnable pop bottles, but it would be a lot more effective if their manufacture was simply banned. Many environmental problems have a lot to do with bad policies and harmful structures, and need to be dealt with on the level of public policy. If we live downstream from a company dumping poison in the water (as millions of us do), we'd be a lot further ahead if we were able to get together and exert enough pressure to have those responsible jailed, and have the source cleaned up, than we would be each spending $235 to have our tap water tested, as the Canadian Green Consumer Guide suggests. By publishing a popular book that ignores the need for collective action and reduces environmental issues to individual consumer choices, Pollution Probe has made a contribution that is questionable at best.
[Abstract by Ulli Diemer]
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