Corporate Responsibility Mondays.

So let’s talk about bananas.

Chiquita Bananas sells bananas in over 70 countries making it the world’s biggest banana company (that’ll be the only time on my blog where you see the word banana used 3x’s in a sentence; 4 if you count this sidenote).

Throughout its history, Chiquita’s operations have contributed to the destablization of at least one Central American country, and compounded the problems of poverty and deteriorating health among banana plantation workers. Chiquita’s predecessor, United Fruit Company, used its political might to convince the U.S. to topple the popularly elected government of Guatemala in the 1950s (which is also made mention of in Empire’s Workshop which I’m currently reading). Over one-hundred thousand people were killed or disappeared as a result of the power struggle that ensued. The company still faces criminal charges for using toxic agrochemicals known to cause sterility and birth defects on Central American banana farms a decade after the substances were banned in the US. Chiquita has excelled past its competitors by using Rainforest Alliance environmental standards in banana production. Chiquita recently announced plans to break into the green marketplace with the production of Fair Trade Certified bananas, however plans were called off when a hurricane wiped out the plantation and all workers were laid off (source: Responsible Shopper).

You can check out their profile on Responsible Shopper or their Wiki for a full list of all their human rights, environmental, and labor violations.

But I thought I’d take a different approach this week. Since some of my readers have complained about this series being way too negative . . . I thought instead of writing a long laundry list of their unethical behavior . . . I’ll instead refer you to the above link.

And instead focus my time on the topic of being informed about our purchases. To be quite honest, until Chiquita Bananas got busted recently for paying terrorists for protection in Columbia . . . I had no idea about their business ethics.

This poses an interesting question for me/us. For 25 years . . . I ate, enjoyed, consumed, and bought Chiquita Bananas without ever once considering anything outside of buying something that I desired . . . namely a banana. You could call this “shopping blindly”. But I find it interesting that I never once stopped to ask any questions about my purchase. It would make sense that if I’m giving my money towards something . . . that I would want to know where that money is going.

I mean after all, this is what most use as an excuse for not giving money to homeless people. We’re scared they’re going to buy alcohol or worse yet . . . drugs. This is very similar to the stance that some Americans have taken towards Citgo Gasoline since it’s owned by Hugo Chavez and Venezuela. They have decided not to give money to Citgo because they don’t feel like their money being used for things they don’t believe in. And if not those examples, I think most of us would agree that if we knew the money that we gave to someone was going to be used to take the life of someone else (to buy a gun, to pay someone else to kill them, etc.) that we would be extremely hesitant about handing over our money to said person.

But somehow when it comes to our day-to-day shopping experiences . . . most of us have taken an “ignorance is bliss” policy. Partly because it honestly takes a little bit of work to be informed about the companies that we buy from.

So my challenge for all of us . . . is not to wait for unethical behavior to get exposed nationally by the likes of CNN or FOX before we decide to boycott shady companies.

If we wait until these exploitations make it to the mass media we are just reactionary. There is no reason that we have to wait for the Kathy Lee sweatshop scandals and the Chiquita Bananas stories to break before we become informed.

Try this . . . before your next pre-planned purchase . . . spend as little as 5 minutes on the internet looking up the particular company that you are preparing to give your hard earned money to. You’ll be surprised as the wealth of reliable information that is available to you that most mass media outlets don’t report until it becomes “news-worthy” and scandal-icious.

But it goes on every day. With companies that we shop at everyday. And if it’s deemed un-American to support Hugo Chavez then it has to be just as un-American to support slavery in sweatshops. And un-American to support environmental carelessness. And un-American to support harassment and rape.

Be proactive.

I’m not sure what’s more American at this point . . . to sit on our ass and do nothing. Or to actually take a stand and fight for other’s freedom.

As always be sure to check out Ariah’s excellent thoughts that propose hopeful alternatives.

[tags]Corporate Responsibility, Chiquita, Chiquita Bananas, Hugo Chavez, Citgo, Responsible Shopper, Spending Habits, Shopping Habits, Empire’s Workshop[/tags]