Fruity packaging

Posted on January 26, 2007 by Antonio

Kix

No fruit in this package

Fruit Shown on Label Often Not in the Box, Kids’ Food Study Says (Via commondreams.org):

Fruit is a big seller for parents who want to feed their children nutritious food. So it’s no surprise that manufacturers prominently display berries, cherries and oranges on boxes of breakfast cereals, drink cans and yogurt containers.

Berry Berry Kix contains no berries whatsoever.
Unfortunately, according to health advocates, many companies fail to put the fruit where it counts — inside the products.

The Prevention Institute and the Strategic Alliance for Healthy Food and Activity Environments, an Oakland-based coalition of California’s leading public health, physical activity and nutrition organizations, say more than half of the most aggressively advertised children’s foods that show fruit on their packaging or even put the word “fruit” in their name contain no fruit.

Yoplait Go-Gurt Strawberry Splash yogurt, Fruity Cheerios and Berry Berry Kix are just a few of the products named in the organization’s study being released today, “Where’s the Fruit?”

Greening Apple

Posted on January 10, 2007 by Antonio

As the hype machine salivates over Steve Jobs‘ announcement of the the new iPhone (at a whopping $400 price tag!), Greenpeace is pushing for a better ecology policy at Apple. At issue is the continued built-in obsolescence of Apple’s products (as a Mac user, you can imagine the frustration of the constant equipment upgrades that have leapfrogged me over the past few years), and the toxic by-product of used computers and batteries. The trailer above is for a movie, Digital Dump, which documents the journey of hi-tech junk. So while I love my Powerbook, at the same time I have to keep in mind that the consumption of electronics and their attendant dream world have a direct environmental impact, from toxic waste to the carbon emissions by-product of the electricity I use to produce media. For more information about digital dumping, go to the Basel Action Network. Also, you can read this great article from Solon.com, “Where computers go to die– and kill.”

The photo below is from a Chinese computer scrapyard where poor people extract precious metals from computer parts.

Greenpeace-Computers-1

Exposing Apple’s Core | Greenpeace USA:

Getting to the Core

As this year’s MacWorld expo kicked off in San Francisco, we wanted to show the participants what’s really beneath the skin of their favorite Apple products. Greenpeace activists projected giant images of the Asian scrapyards where many electronic products – including those made by Apple – end up at the end of their lives. Images of electronics being melted down, taken apart and releasing toxic chemicals were displayed above the front of the Apple store.

Technorati Tags: Apple, iPhone

Dropping thought bombs

Posted on May 29, 2006 by Antonio

The ghost of Tibor Kalman, whose tenure at the helm of Colors Magazine revitalized and re-appropiated the language of commercial graphics for social change, seems eerily present behind the creative campaign of Dropping Knowledge. Like a Zen koan, Dropping Knowledge is part playful pun, part serious business. We drop a dime like anonymous tipsters to the cosmic dharma police on nonsensical, idiotic social practices, and we download knowledge like hidden viruses inside protein shell ad phrases.

The project is part of a trend of participatory new media, utilizing the Web as an instantaneous democratic medium. In this case site users can upload questions, which then get translated into ads, films and commercials. The more successful combination of images and words have built in paradoxes that get us thinking the way that riddles scramble our rational minds. Ideally these should be ready for meme deployment. That is, I’d like to see ready-made code available so people can easily drop Dropping Knowledge onto their iPods, P2Ps, and into emails. Thankfully the movies are in Quicktime format so they are easy to download, but I’d still like to see viral marketing strategies in place. But… it’s a nice start. I look forward to more idea infections.

“Tibor Kalman, Perverse Optimist” (Peter Hall, Michael Bierut)