THERE’S a Rotten new soapbox next to the couch, which is going to be a hungry and thirsty place.
This Netflix series should come with a health warning: if you are trying to be an ethical consumer, you’ll never eat, drink or buy anything again. I still have some episodes to go because it was shocking and depressing.
In this house, we have always tried to be responsible, smart consumers. Every offering ‒ from food to insurance to medicine to life’s accessories ‒ has always had to pass the test: who’s making the money? And if it’s so good, why isn’t everyone doing it/taking it/eating it? Who paid for the “research” that “reveals” how good it is for you or how happy it will make you? How is it claiming our buy-in, literally?
As consumers, we need essential stuff, and even some “treats”, so we have to make choices, on health, cost or brands. These form habits and we become mindless about what we buy. “Brand loyalty” becomes a thing.
Some years ago, there was a brief global uproar over child labour and modern-day slavery in African cocoa farming. Chocolate makers vowed to end these practices, and the furore died down. So, I figured, that was sorted and I could get back to chocoholic ways.
Until it all went Rotten and chocolate was put on the banned list.
Also, garlic, a form of which is a staple even in the low-production kitchen that came with my house.
Soap? Avos? Wine? Sugar? South Africa has a particularly sordid history with this crop and, stunningly, that is replicated in other cane-growing regions to this day. Bottled water? Cosmetics?
Virtually nothing has escaped the marketing prowess and greed of Global Big Business and its allies, Power Politics, and our unthinking willingness to believe them.
Prof Google and I did some research and it was astonishing to see how many of the items on the hit list are on our shelves, in one form or another.
My favourite chocolate is not ethically produced, neither is the garlic. The only bottled water at home is a collection of 5-litre containers from the flood times, rotated and refilled from the tap to cope with the growing number of water outages. The bottles will have to last because I will only ever buy one again in a desperate emergency.
Avos come once a year from my tree and sugar is off the grocery list.
The common denominators in these “must-haves” are manipulation of gullible consumers ‒ even those, like me, who think they can’t be fooled ‒ and exploitation of people who are desperately poor or small producers, whose rights are undelivered or “bought out”. In most cases the accomplices are political sponges who soak up the benefits offered by very powerful lobbyists and special interest groups to govern in their favour.
My little one-person boycott of global giants guilty of unethical or questionable acts is, alas, not going to change the world. The rottenness is so pervasive and diverse there are few options, other than going without.
Watching Rotten will cut my consumption of stuff by at least half and, where necessary, brand loyalty will be turfed out to support those who earn it. And I’ll grow my own garlic if I can’t do without.
- Slogrove is news editor
The Independent on Saturday