Chill my ride
Thursday, January 17th, 2008A while ago I posted about Browne’s “Chill My Ride” competition where you could win a Hummer. A few people who read my post contacted Browne’s parent company Fonterra to complain about this. Eloise Dortch (read my interview with her here) received a reply to her letter from Paul Murphy, their Marketing Manager for Fresh Dairy. Eloise and Paul have agreed to let me show you some of what they wrote.
When Eloise wrote to complain, she said that although she was a long-term customer of Brownes because it’s a local business, she didn’t like the current “win a Hummer” promotion. She explained why Hummers are bad for the environment, providing facts and figures.
“Perhaps you heard that Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Governor of California, recently got rid of his Hummer? That was because a Hummer emits an average 11 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions each year. This is nearly three times as much as the average small car. Or put it another way: 11 tonnes-a-year compares to 14 tonnes-a-year that the Federal Government says Australians currently emit per person. Imagine what would happen to our total emissions if we all drove Hummers.”
She then went on to say that she would reconsider her boycott if the promotion was ended.
Paul Murphy replied that Fonterra, as one of Australia’s leading dairy companies, was aware of the environmental problems caused by greenhouse gas emissions, and had been working on improving the issue for some time. From his letter:
During the period 1998 to 2006, Fonterra has achieved a 21 per cent reduction in the total amount of carbon emissions from its dairy operations (approx 78,000 tonnes per annum).”
Fonterra participated in the original Greenhouse Challenge program established in 1995 - this was a voluntary program, and many companies didn’t do much after joining. I think a 21% reduction in emissions represents a serious effort. He went on to say:
I apologise if our ‘Chill my Ride’ promotion appears to indicate that we are not sensitive to environmental issues. Your feedback certainly prompts us to be more thoughtful when developing promotions in the future.”
Eloise replied:
“A cut in emissions of 21 per cent over nine years for such an energy-intensive industry is reasonably impressive. However such a simple thing as this poorly-considered promotion has for me undone any good that such environmental policies achieved for your company’s image. To quote a friend who saw your response: “Being good in one area doesn’t give them license to be bad in another.” “
Like Eloise, I’ll be boycotting Brownes while this promotion is running, and if they choose to do anything similar in future. This promotion is irresponsible and undoes the good work put in by many people to raise awareness of the problems caused by the pollution from our cars (or our enormous ego-substitutes, depending on what you drive).
However, one of my additional reasons for not buying their products anymore was that I found out that Brownes was no longer a locally-owned business. As regular readers will know, eating locally is one way to reduce your eco-footprint.
But while I was emailing Paul about this article, he mentioned that although Fonterra owned Brownes, Brownes products are still made from milk from WA farmers, and are still produced here in WA. This meets my own requirements for local food: although I’d prefer to see the profits stay in WA, keeping the source food and production local means that (for Perth residents at least) Brownes is still a lower-impact option compared to eastern states brands.
I hope in the future that Fonterra will make sure it’s marketing is in line with it’s day-to-day efforts to have less impact on the environment. This is why I think that it’s always worth the effort to write a letter to a company whose operations you disagree with: you never know what you might learn, and you might get them to reconsider their decisions.