PepsiCo conceives half truths with Carbon Trust’s help

We have seen it before. It is the writer who takes a comment or sentence out of context, dramatizes it, and regurgitates it to the public with a completely changed, unethical perspective. It is the sub that has 6 grams of fat or less, just as long as you use wheat bread and don’t put mayonnaise, oil, or cheese on it. It is the small print at the bottom of the one million dollar sweepstakes that turns your dream into a scam.

What is it? It’s the marketing ploy that tells half that story.

Recently, the New York Times released an article that highlighted PepsiCo’s efforts to manage its footprint by working with Carbon Trust to calculate the total amount of carbon emissions in one half gallon jug of orange juice. The findings got enthusiasts excited about the potential of tracking companies’ total emissions. So what is the problem? Carbon Trust is harboring relationships with businesses and allowing them to decide what products should be monitored and calculated.

Of course, Pepsi chose Tropicana, a company that turns fresh harvest fruits into juice. Now, Pepsi is contemplating posting this information on its web site as a marketing statistic to proclaim its efforts in carbon emissions tracking.

With Carbon Trust, companies have access to another non-profit organization to tailor their green marketing schemes to the public. They are able to pick and choose their best products, evaluate them, and market them to the world for how green and sustainable they are. It is a ploy. No company is going to select a product that needs to be transported from halfway across the globe, shipped across the nation, and then processed in a carbon-hungry factory or plant.

Ultimately, there needs to be a total revolution in carbon emissions tracking. Every company and every product needs to be monitored. Until then, allowing companies to use Carbon Trust as a marketing effort is only going to give the uneducated public a false picture of the sustainability of companies.