Definitely, if they would mean it.

But mostly it seems to be just another way of publicity for them. I mean, they invest millions in projects to help fight child labor, for example, but then they spend billions on advertisement! If they would just invest more money in actually changing the situation they could save their CSR money, would maybe become even more popular, oh and: show that they actually care!!

So why don’t they do it?? Because it’s just cheaper for them to spend millions on  CSR than improve the working conditions in third world countries.

For instance, as Jeff Ballinger explains, a sewer in China or Vietnam earns 40ct for a sports shoe. If every sewer would earn 75ct more, you would basically  solve the problem of poverty. But that would cost companies like Nike about $210 million dollars. So they rather invest $10 million in CSR. (found in “Uns gehört die Welt!” by Klaus Werner-Lobo, dtv: 2010, p. 94)

Unfortunately, for us it doesn’t seem to make a difference…

But what do you think, is CSR just one big fat lie??

Diarrhea? – Take a  pill!

Problems in bed? – Take a pill!

Well, aren’t we lucky? We can be sure that for most diseases or issues we might have there’s a pill that makes everything better. And usually we can trust the medication we take, since of course nobody would sell medication that hasn’t been tested before, right?

But who was the medication tested on? Laboratory rats might suffice for the beginning, but eventually the new pills need to be tested on humans. That’s why pharmaceutical companies look for people who are desperate for money and therefore willing to do almost anything, mostly in poor countries. But that still costs the companies a lot of money. Wouldn’t it be so much more convenient to just test new medication on people without letting them know??

That’s what the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer (e.g. Viagra) must have thought when it tested a new antibiotic called Trovan during a meningitis epidemic in Kano (Nigeria‘s largest state) in 1996.

200 children and infants were treated by Pfizer and in the course of the treatment 11 children died, 5 of them were taking Trovan and 6 were taking a comparison drug. Others suffered from brain damages or were left deaf, blind or paralyzed. The families of the victims didn’t know that their children were treated with new experimental drugs.

In 2007, government officials finally brought charges against Pfizer. The government originally wanted 2,75 billion dollars, but in 2009 the Nigerian government and Pfizer settled the case out of court. Pfizer agreed to pay up to 75 million dollars.

Trovan was released in the USA in 1997, but only for adults and 2 years later it was restricted because it was associated with liver damage and deaths. In Europe it was never released.

How is it possible that a case like that took over a decade to be  brought in front of a court?? And how is it even possible that a pharmaceutical company uses children as laboratory guinea pigs????

What do you think about when you hear the word globalization??

Maybe something like: markets becoming integrated in a global network due to new methods of communication, transportation and trade? or you go even further and think about the circulation of culture and languages etc.?

But did you ever consider the question who actually benefits from this whole process??

Uns gehört die Welt! by Klaus Werner- Lobo

Well, I bought a book recently that covers exactly that topic. It’s called “Uns gehört die Welt! Macht und Machenschaften der Multis“ by Klaus Werner-Lobo and it presents many very interesting facts about companies and how they maximize their profits. He explains in very simple words how the different industries exploit third world countries and finance wars. In addition, he portrays companies like Bayer AG and Adidas in a way you probably haven’t seen them yet…

So I can really recommend this book to everyone who wants to look at globalization from a different perspective and who’s open to criticism, because unfortunately you don’t hear much about that on TV or read about it in the newspaper, because they are making tons of money with advertising exactly those companies.^^

This book has only been published in German so far, but I really wanted to share this with you!!

@ all the smokers: do you know where your tobacco comes from???

One of the biggest tobacco producing countries is Malawi. You could assume that the people there would live fairly well, considering the huge profits the tobacco  companies make every year…. but that’s just not the case. Instead, many people live in a modern kind of slavery as the UN says. The families working in the tobacco industry have to fulfil a daily quota of tobacco the farm owner has demanded of them, because they’ve been forced to borrow money from the land owner and can’t leave until they work off their debt. But in order to fulfil this quota they are forced to employ their children! For example, a family of seven that works 7 days a week from dawn to dust makes as much as around 22€ a year!!! Children as young as 3 are already employed!! Child labor is illegal in Malawi, but the reality unfortunately still shows a different picture….

The children working on the tobacco plantations suffer from severe headaches typically for  green tobacco sickness, or nicotine poisoning, where high doses of nicotine are absorbed through the skin. In other tobacco producing countries like the USA, workers advised to wear protective clothing…

The tobacco industry knows about the problems with child labor. What do they do???

Well, of course they all claim to do something against it… but in fact they do very little! They have spent only $6.6 million (their turnover was ca. $173 billion in 2009!!!) over eight years in projects to improve education, sanitation, health and crop planting that are keeping children in school, but the project works with only 2 of the 28 states of Malawi!!!

So isn’t that another reason to stop smoking???

Oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico

Not only fish but also whales and sea turtles are in danger!! This oil spill is a life threatening disaster for the all the marine creatures as well as the ones depending on them, like all the seabirds! It will take many many years for the ecosystem to recover, if it ever will…

Sea turtle covered in oil

The fishermen lose their source of income… of course  they get compensated, what do the fish get???

Nevertheless, companies like BP won’t stop to set up new risky oil platforms, because there are only few oil deposits on land that they have access to. Many of the oil-producing countries have their own state-owned oil companies or they have high restrictions for private companies like BP.

• 33 countries own 92 % of the oil deposits
  
• 750 oil platforms are on the ocean right now!!

I was shocked when I read this number, I had never expected that it would be this high!! Did you?

Well, do you ever wonder where your clothes or shoes come from? Or how they are made? The truth is ugly… or sweaty^^

Sweatshops are  factories, mostly found in developing countries, that exploit their workers. The workers have to endure horrendous labor conditions and sometimes have to work up to 80 hours a week!! There are many articles that report about violations of labor law, e.g. child labor,  and hazardous working environments, e.g. insufficient ventilation, inadequate bathroom installations and no protective clothes for handling dangerous dyers.

Moreover, especially female workers have to suffer from sexual harassment and have to take pregnancy tests regularly. If they are pregnant, they are either fired or they have to take vacation without pay.

And if that wasn’t already bad enough, the worker’s salary is so low, that they can hardly afford to pay for rent, clothes, school education for their children or medication. That’s why many people work overtime, take up another job or let their children work as well. Even if the workers are paid the established minimum wage, which is not always the case, they will still only make ca. 80 – 120€ per month!! The minimum wages are held low by the governments, because they are influenced by the big companies. The governments want to keep those companies in the country to secure the jobs and if they would raise their minimum wages, those companies are likely to move to even cheaper countries.

Worst of all, the workers are not even able to protest against those poor labor conditions.  Labor movements are suppressed by the government and labor unions are forbidden almost everywhere.

The ones who benefit from the whole mess are once again multinational companies like Nike, Puma, Adidas, Wal-Mart and so on. They claim that they don’t know about the poor conditions in their ancillary industries and act very shocked when they are confronted with it, but I think that’s just a lie. They know what’s going on but they don’t do anything to really change the situation. As long as they make their big bucks, everything is fine…

To boycott every company that benefits from sweatshops is almost impossible. But at least we should show them that we care and that we know what’s going on, don’t you think??

Here you can support various protest campaigns of the clean clothes campaign against the terrible working conditions!!!

Ok, so far I haven’t explicitly named any German company that screws up. Well, if you thought that German companies had more morals than Americans, than I’m sorry to have to burst your bubble!

Let’s take ThyssenKrupp, one of the largest steel producers in the world -  not to mention one of the biggest armaments companies.  But I don’t want to tell you about the weapons they sell, but about their new huge steel mill in Brazil.

The mill, located in the Sepetiba Bay in the state of Rio de Janeiro, will have an annual capacity of 5 million tons of steel! It’s an enormous project and comparatively expensive. But the financial costs will be amortized pretty soon after it starts production this summer, not so much the environmental burden that goes along with it.

ThyssenKrupp in Brazil

The mill is even going to have its own harbor, just too bad that because of the construction, heavy metals were swirled up polluting the water. In the Sepetiba Bay most families live on fishing. Due to this contamination of the water over 8000 families (all in all about 40 000 people)  lost their source of income! ThyssenKrupp is planning to employ 3500 people – a small number in comparison. Also, more than 9 square kilometers of mangrove forest had to be cut down before they could start their construction.

There have been multiple lawsuits issued against ThyssenKrupp, not only because of the environment but also because of a lack in protective clothing. But even if they lose some of those cases and they are forced to pay millions of Euros for compensation,  it’s not really going to hurt them.

By the way, the Brazilian government supports ThyssenKrupp with all kinds of benefits, because they only see the jobs that will be created – even though there are more people that are put out of work. In addition, all of the steel will be exported to Germany or the USA, so Brazil won’t even earn any money with the processing of the steel.

On their webpage ThyssenKrupp says:

“It is one of our chief priorities to take into account business, social and ecological aspects in our decisions.”

Too bad that this isn’t all true….

Here’s a short video about ThyssenKrupp on ARD, for those who understand German.

That’s definitely not what we think about when we go to the gas station…. but I think it’s scary that you don’t even hear about it or did you know about this?? What do you think is the role of a company like Shell in a country like Nigeria?

Since I already discussed one dirty side of  gold, I decided to also let you know about the other one…

GOLD FINANCES WAR!!!!

Gold is not only mined by large companies, but also illegally by men who hope to become rich one day…. of course that’s hardly ever going to happen. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) , a country with plenty of deposits of gold and coltan, the abundance of natural resources is a curse.

In the eastern part of the country, the Congo war (1996-2003) continues. Militias from Rwanda and Uganda, as well as the Congolese army, still fight each other and the civilian population is suffering. Since 1996 more than 5 million people died in the DRC – that’s the worst war since 1945!! Did YOU even know about it???

The rebels attack the civilians, burn their villages, murder and rape. They scare the people into compliance and demand gold from them. They smuggle the gold into Uganda, where it finds its way into world trade.

Gold's way into world trade

That’s how the militias finance their weapons. By the way, the Congolese army isn’t any help either, cause they are poorly paid and therefore also ravage the villages or sell guns to militias.

Watch this great VIDEO for further information!!! (ignore the commercial in the beginning^^)

The trafficking of “blood diamonds” has been banned from the jewellery industry, the same hasn’t happened for gold…  Most of the times the source of the gold isn’t traced back!

What do you think, should the industry be forced to trace back the source of the gold?? Do you think it’s possible? If so, do you think it would change the situation in the DRC??

But what is gold actually worth? Is a shiny ring or necklace worth the fact that others lose the land they live on, the clean water they drink, their source of income or even beloved family members???

If you live in a third world country and the ground you live on contains only one gram of gold per ton, you could already get in trouble… For large Australian, South African, British or North American mining companies that’s really all they need to make a profit. They destroy whole mountains just to “wash out” the gold with cyanide. The remaining rocks (99,9999 percent!!!) are highly toxic waste. The water used in the process of gold cyanidation is also extremely contaminated and is collected in a basin.

The result: 750 kilograms of gold for 250 000 tons of rocks (assuming 3 grams of gold per ton of ore) as well as tons of mud made up of heavy metals such as lead, cadmium, copper, mercury and toxins like arsenic.

Mine operated by a North American company in Ghana

After approximately 8 years the deposit is usually used up and the companies move on leaving behind hundreds of hectares of ravaged land and a settling basin with 2-3 million cubic meters of a sodium cyanide solution. If you would swim in there, you would be dead immediately!

So what happens if the dam, that holds back the contaminated water, breaks?? Or a helicopter transporting the cyanide to a mine loses one of the crates of the deadly chemical??

Well, then most of the times the responsible company first tries to downplay it, but then suddenly all wildlife in the river dies….

“People using this water are likely to die – they cannot survive”

Professor Kirpal Singh, University of Papua New Guinea

How are the people affected that live in an area where a company would like to start mining?

The native population in those regions are most of the times expropriated and only poorly compensated for their land or just simply chased away by armed paramilitary units. Since those people are mostly small farmers, the companies take away their basis of existence. Some might get the chance to work for the mining company, but they leave after ca. 8 years and the people are not trained to work in any other job.

In addition, the environmental burden is tremendous. Cases where cyanide is spilled seem to occur all the time, e.g. Guyana in 1995, Kyrgyzstan in 1998, Romania and Papua New Guinea in 2000 or just last year in Ghana.

In Germany or France there are also gold deposits, but here it would be WAY too expensive to mine for gold, even if the public would allow it, because the toxic waste would have to be disposed of as hazardous waste…..

But hey, let’s go to third world countries that are so deeply indebted that they can’t afford to say no! In fact, more than 70 countries, 31 of which are African, eased up on mining restrictions since the 1980s to attract foreign companies.

Companies shouldn’t just exploit the resources without a concern for the environment or the people living there!!!

But after all, 85% of the gold produced is used for jewellery…… so do you think anything will ever be different???? who do you think would have to change??