For the past eleven years, Earthday Resources has issued its Don’t Be Fooled Awards to the top ten "greenwashers" of the previous year. Greenwashing is defined as "disinformation disseminated by an organization so as to present an environmentally responsible public image." Not surprisingly, there are a number of organizations out there who have devised specious advertising campaigns to try and cash in on the more than $540 billion global market for products and services with low environmental impact.

The Don’t Be Fooled 2003 report does not consist solely of finger-pointing. There are also valuable tips for consumers attempting to evaluate the claims made in advertising and on the packaging materials for products they are considering buying. Based on the standards adopted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) in 2002, the report dissects what it actually means to be "100% Organic" versus simply "Organic." Other tips include detailed breakdowns of the "Recycled," "Recyclable," "Degradable," "Eco Safe/Earth Smart," "Ozone Friendly," and "Reduced Materials" labels.

Astrology is lame and Myers-Briggs is for losers. The omniscient Oracle of Starbucks can tell you everything about your personality by what you drink at Starbucks. Simply enter your full drink order -- including size -- into the field below and the all-knowing Oracle will tell you everything about your personality. Better yet, input your friends' orders to find out what they're really like.

Unlike other imitations, the Oracle is 100% accurate.

This is AdLand, a commercial-laden delirium of heaven and hell for advertising addicts 'round the world. It's easy and free to join our gaggle of AdGrunts. Logging in opens wide the AdLand gates to our forum and a flock of other features. If you remain just a visitor, you'll never know what you're missing - too bad for you.

Even better, Super AdGrunts who PayPal a teeny, tiny two bucks (US) a month to help defray site costs get the crème de la crème - access to over 10010 TV commercials in our mighty ad archive, including 25 comprehensive years of Super Bowl commercials. See this article for the skinny, then take us for a spinny. Pop-up ad free. Spam free. That's what your two bucks buys ya. Access. Privacy. Bliss.

One night, in 1936, Goldman sat in his office wondering how customers might move more groceries. He stared idly at a wooden folding chair. Put a basket on the seat, wheels on the legs. . . Wait a minute. Why not two baskets, one above the other? Goldman and a mechanic, Fred Young, began tinkering. Their first shopping cart was a metal frame that held two wire baskets. Since you have to be able to store shopping carts, the frames were designed to be folded and the baskets nested. Goldman formed the Folding Carrier Co. By 1940 shopping carts had found so firm a place in American life as to grace the cover of the Saturday Evening Post. Supermarkets were redesigned to accommodate them. Checkout counter design and the layout of aisles changed. Baby seats were added. Finally, in 1947, the folding cart gave way to the solid nesting carts we use today. By 1940 I was pushing a cart through the A & P supermarket across the street from Ramaley's. Ramaley's survived -- first as an upscale fine-foods deli, now as a liquor store. And, when I try to remember childhood, I have to erase shopping carts from the image. By now that's hard to do. Shopping carts are so carved into our thinking -- it's hard to remember a life without them.

Long gone are the days when small, family farmers supplied area stores and chains with locally-grown tomatoes in season. Today, huge corporate growers with multi-state operations sell tomatoes year round to even bigger corporate buyers, including fast food mega-chains like Taco Bell and Burger King. Those fast food giants receive cheap, high-quality US tomatoes, thanks to the sacrifices of thousands of hard-working Florida farmworkers who pick tomatoes at a piece rate that has remained virtually unchanged for over two decades.

What can Taco Bell do?

Taco Bell could nearly double the picking piece rate paid to farmworkers by agreeing to pay just one penny more per pound for the tomatoes it buys from Florida growers. We believe that Taco Bell, as part of the "world's largest restaurant system" can easily afford to pay one penny more. But even if they passed the cost on to YOU, the consumer, it would still be less than 1/4 of 1 cent more for your chalupa.

Public awareness and consumer demand for Fair Trade Certified coffee are essential to the growth of the market. Activist pressure campaigns, however, are not an effective strategy for either building consumer demand or industry support for Fair Trade. TransFair USA strongly opposes pressure campaigns waged by activist groups that attempt to discredit the very companies that consumers should be supporting for their efforts to ensure a fair return to coffee farmers. Partnership, rather than pressure, is a far more powerful and sustainable model for engaging industry and helping farmers. We view the present activist campaign against Starbucks as particularly misguided and unfair because it ignores the company’s many important contributions to coffee farmers through Fair Trade and other programs.