Our foods are becoming more and more tattooed with labeling that is supposed to reflect social and environmental responsibility. For instance, United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Organic and Fair Trade Certified labels are growing in their presence on foods shelved in high end grocery stores like Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods. Also among these is the Certified B Corporation label, which is used to identify a food company that is socially and environmentally sustainable to potential customers. Consumers who have the means to buy such foods are likely to spend a little more, believing that their purchasing power shapes and influences food companies to not use genetically modified organisms or dangerous pesticides, to pay farmers a fair price for their produce, to use a minimum of amount of energy and natural resources in their packaging, and/or create little or no pollution and waste.
On a recent dumpster diving mission to a tea company plant that uses all of the above labels on its packaging, it was discovered that pounds of Black, Chai, Chamomile, Peppermint, Ginger, Lemon and Fennel were thrown out in large plastic bags. Four bags were found with these various tea assortments with two bags salvaged by the divers. The bags were then brought back to one of the dumpster-diver’s residence where the teas could be sorted through and salvaged for future use. As the divers sifted through the tea, it was discovered that most of the bags were damaged through the machinery responsible for packaging the tea. On average one out of forty bags was perfect and not damaged by the machinery. But as the divers sorted the perfect bags out, they found it wasteful to throw out the thousands of bags that remained, a few of these without tea but many still containing enough tea to salvage. Thus, they pulled out glass jars with lids to sort out and collect the tea that was in the punched, cut or slightly shredded bags.
The result amounted to pounds of tea … enough to keep the divers from buying tea for decades or at least enjoy until it until turning stale. Even if the tea is not consumed it can be used alternatively for composting. Still, reflecting on the fact that only 50% was salvaged from the bins that night and the amount of packaging and tea that was both salvaged and wasted brings into question the ‘sustainability’ of this tea company and other foods that meet the regulations to become a Certified B Corporation. The tea could have gone to food banks for gleaning; it could have also gone to workers or poor communities who might want the tea but instead was headed for the local landfill.
Certified B Corporation is a non-profit organization that has a logo similar to the Copyright Symbol: ©, only the B takes place of the C. From what is posted at their website: http://www.bcorporation.net/ , the B is informally short for ‘Benefit,’ implying that the standards the organization upholds for companies bearing the label are good for both society and the environment. From the point of view of the people who dumpster-dived the tea factory and found a considerable amount of waste of both tea and packaging, Certified B Corporation is more about good marketing than holding companies to sustainable social and environmental practices. It is quite possible that the tea factory makes contributions in other ways, but from the point of view of people who sifted through their waste, Certified B Corporations have a long way to go before achieving ethical and sustainable practices.
