Assignments

In response to Chris's comment that I post some of what my student's found out for their assignments, I am doing just that. The original assignment was given out on the first full day of class after we'd watched The Story of Stuff (I swear I do more than show videos). Anyway, the assignment was to pick three things, a food item, a cosmetics/toiletry item, and an electronic device that they use everyday and tell me how it is made, where (at least one of) the components comes from, and talk about any social/moral/political issues associated with those items. One of the big points made in The Story of Stuff is that the true cost of an item is in no way reflected by its purchase price. I wanted them to discuss the external costs of items they use everyday.

Most everybody said cell phone or iPod for their electronic device. That was intentional on my part because I kind of wanted them to focus on coltan and the concept of blood minerals with regard to the ongoing conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo. I could have come out and asked, "how many women have been raped so you can play your PlayStation?," but I figured this was more subtle.

The cosmetics/toiletry category was kind of a wash (see what I did there?) in that they didn't find much. Most chose to right about dangerous working conditions, particularly from inhaling ingredients when shampoos and soaps are manufactured. I was kind of hoping some of them would write about the necessity of cosmetics in the first place. One of the UN's favorite statistics is this: it would take $6 billion per year (in addition to current expenditures) to provide basic education for every person in the developing world; $8 billion per year is spent on cosmetics in the US alone. The assignment really was worded more like where does my stuff come from though, so I considered their answers to be pretty good.

The food items were easier. I'd given them some good starting points: chocolate, coffee, bananas, tomatoes. All food items with significant social issues. One of my students is from Cote d'Ivoire, so he wrote about chocolate. Nestle and Mars control most of the chocolate market, and Ivory Coast is the largest supplier of cocoa. The cocoa is exported to other countries where it is turned into chocolate. Most people in Ivory Coast have never even tasted chocolate (just as most people in rural Latin America have never drunk coffee). Many of the workers on cocoa plantations are young, under 14 years old, and many are working in either bonded labor or outright slave conditions. Nestle* says, "not our problem. We're just buying a product." Seriously. They said that. The cocoa being exported out of the Ivory Coast now is funding the sitting President and his supporters, while the man who was actually elected has been unable to take over the presidency. Burkina Faso has been allowing the cocoa to come through their country and around to ports in Togo (since the Ivory Coast ports are in the south in the areas held by the opposition). They are exacting taxes for this service. Burkina Faso + the legitimate government of Ivory Coast = not friends. There is all out war between the two factions in Ivory Coast. Widespread violence, slave labor, exploitation of the resource (since most of the profits accrue to the chocolate producers rather than the cocoa growers) means that the cost of a candy bar at 3/$1 or whatever those cute little heart shaped boxes of Valentines chocolates sell for these days in no way captures the true cost of those items.

*Nestle is, by the way, no stranger to controversy. The Nestle boycott is one of the longest running boycotts around. In the 70s and 80s, they were accused of giving away free samples of baby formula in developing countries - just enough so that women would use it, their milk would dry up and they'd have to buy it. Since most of them couldn't afford to buy it, they'd buy what they could and dilute it way down such that many babies died from malnutrition - and many others died or were sickened because of course the water supplies are often unsafe. Those practices aren't ongoing anymore, but there is an international treaty against the marketing of baby formula (which the US did not sign, obviously, or I wouldn't have gotten my free can of formula on the way out the hospital door) and Nestle has been caught continuing to advertise it in other countries.

On a related note, milk was another favorite topic that they chose to write about. As we saw in the Life and Debt movie, the Jamaican dairy industry has all but collapsed because of imported powdered milk from the US (it's reconstituted in Jamaica and sold just like fresh). The US government and the EU government heavily subsidize dairy farmers so our dairy products are insanely cheap. In the EU's case, 60% cheaper than what it actually costs to produce. There's no way developing nations can compete with that.

Anyway, all in all I think it was a good assignment that got them thinking about the "true" cost of things that we all buy. There's so much more they/I could have written about - sugar, coffee, tomatoes, bananas, cotton, beef, etc., etc. It's sometimes paralyzing to think about it all. Local Farmer's Markets!!