Breast Cancer Hypocrisy
Breast cancer awareness is at an all-time high, thanks in part to the pink ribbons that now adorn everything from clothing to food to toilet paper. These pink ribbons symbolize the fight against breast cancer and show that companies are aiding in the fight by pledging to support efforts to end breast cancer. Or are they? In this article we examine the world of “pinkwashed” products and corporate hypocrisy surrounding breast cancer.
Written by Christine Conrad, Green Health Research Contributor
What is Pinkwashing?
“Pinkwashing” is term that was coined by the Breast Cancer Action group to describe the actions of corporations who say they are supporting the fight against breast cancer but are really only paying lip-service to the cause. Many corporations who use the pink ribbon on their products do not disclose how much money from the sale of “pink” products will go to help fight breast cancer, or which breast cancer groups will receive this money.
This means that corporations could potentially claim they are donating money to breast cancer groups and then not actually do so. This also makes it easy for corporations to instead choose to donate such a small fraction of money to breast cancer charities the donation becomes more of an exercise in marketing and public relations than true charity.
For example, Yoplait’s pink lidded yogurt was sold under the promotion that for every pink lid mailed back to Yoplait during a set time frame Yoplait would donate ten cents to the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation. While this might seem like a great idea, more money would have been raised if women simply donated the cost of the stamp used to mail in the lids to the Komen Foundation themselves! A woman would have to eat 100 containers of yogurt AND mail them back in herself for Yoplait to make even a $10 contribution to fight breast cancer. While Yoplait could have instead simply donated a portion of their proceeds from the sale of this yogurt to Komen directly, they instead placed the onus of responsibility for the donation on the customer.
According to one opinion poll conducted in 2000, more than two-thirds of women said that they would purchase any product linked to the fight against breast cancer. Corporations have picked up on this spending trend, and as time passes ever increasing numbers of products are now being marketed under the pink ribbon. While the willingness to donate money to fight breast cancer is laudable, this does not mean that the corporate reasoning behind this effort is. Further complicating the picture is the fact that many companies who produce pink ribbon products also produce chemicals and other pollutants that are now being linked to the development of breast cancer!
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