Author: josephinestc

A problem that has been plaguing our planet for over 30 years, is our ever changing climate. One of the main causers of this is the private sector, and only 15% of all businesses in the US are actually changing their practices to accommodate the new needs of our planet. Consumers have also begun to take into account which corporations are downsizing their carbon footprint, and are choosing to take their business there. This leads to what  the corporate world calls “greenwashing.” Greenwashing is the term used to describe companies that put on a front of caring for the environment, creating sustainability plans, and producing one product made from biodegradable materials, screaming eco-friendly. The thing with these greenwashing companies is that sometimes their promises made to the public are never followed through on, but they still gain a new millennial target market through false advertising. The big question , however, is how much good will this one product actually do? In order to find answers, two household brands, Walmart and Lush, will be closely examined through a case study to uncover the truth about these brands and their promises.

Walmart was founded on the phrase “save money, live better” and offers affordable goods to the working class. However, when it comes to manufacturing these goods and selling them as cheap as possible, it’s difficult to execute it in the most environmentally friendly way. How does Walmart rectify this problem? By creating their sustainability plan in 2005. In this plan Walmart made many promises and stated how they would help save our environment, but little has actually been done since then. They have begun to cut down on their packaging and producing less plastic, but this was only intended to save money for production. However consumers began to pick up that this was going on and praised Walmart for their environmentall friendly products which started the greenwashing. Greenwashing is the term used to describe companies that put on a front of caring for the environment, creating sustainability plans, and producing one product made from biodegradable materials, screaming eco-friendly.

In the midst of these greenwashing companies, there are a small percentage of corporations that were founded purely for the reason of saving our climate through consumers, one of these being Lush Cosmetics. Founded by Mark Constantine and Liz Weir in a small beauty salon in Poole, England, these all natural products became a staple in any beauty gurus daily routine. They also fight angainst animal testing for beauty products, contaminating our oceans, and putting harmful chemicals into essential beauty products. Lush reported in 2018 that they are currently working towards refitting all their lights in their stores across America with what is called Light Emitting Diodes. LED’s use only a fraction of what regular light bulbs use and last just as long, which is an added bonus. Containing no mercury as well, these light fixtures are estimated to reduce a carbon footprint by almost 6 tons a year.

The Fermi Paradox is the idea that extraterrestrial life exists in our universe, despite the lack of evidence. Italian- American physicist Enrico Fermi claims this lack of evidence is because our universe is so vast and there are many stars in the milky-way like our sun that there are many places far away where aliens can leave signs of life. In short, the paradox  argues scale and probability for finding extraterrestrial intelligence. There are many questions that come along with finding this phenomenon. One being, “why can’t we find artifacts or any proof here on Earth?” the answer is our access to space travel. The kind we currently have is surprisingly, very slow for our galaxy. It would take 5 million to 500 million years to fully colonize the galaxy and explore every star meteor and planet we have. The second question is “Why do we see no signs in other places of the universe?” We can tie this question into our lack of speed in space travel as well,  but a new point that is brought up is that these advanced civilizations of extraterrestrial beings are out of our range to detect them using satellites. So this paradox as a whole is centered around our Earth being too far away from any signs of life forms other than ourselves. The universe is too vast to be fully explored and colonized, so how are we so sure we are not the only life forms here? Fermi was not the only researcher who had this question. The topic of extraterrestrial life forms have been a hot button topic for generations and finding a UFO is on many people’s bucket list. There are also equations to back up this theory, one being the Drake equation. Created by scientist Frank Drake in 1961, the equation is used to find systematic meanings in probability involved in the existence of alien life.

THESIS: looks back on the history of injustice in African American education and introducing legislation that helped reform education, but still addresses the clear gap between African American and white education.

ETHOS: The author used Brown v. Board of Education to pull facts to back up their claims as well as other famous court rulings for educational reform.

PATHOS: author discusses the difference he noticed coming from a white suburban neighborhood adjacent to a less fortunate neighborhood. He states, “there exists a major rift in income, race distribution, and public school performance between my small middle class town and its neighboring city.” The author adds personal tones by explaining how he grew up witnessing the growing gap in the different public schools.

KARIOS: This essay is relevant because in intercity schools, we are still seeing major performance gaps as compared to suburban neighborhoods with heavily funded schools.

STRUCTURE: it’s structured almost like an essay for a professional journal. It goes in detail and pulls evidence from multiple credible sources. The minimal graphics except the authors also contributes to the feel of the piece.

Hi everyone! My name is Josephine St. Claire, I’m a freshman from Fairfax, VA (about 20 minutes outside of DC) and I love UD! I’m majoring in Communications and I’m thinking about declaring Italian as my minor. I plan on becoming a sports PR agent for Edelman Public Relations and work alongside my dad. My family is very important to me. My mother is a middle school special ed teacher (she’s a saint), my father is a VP for Edelman PR, my big sister Amanda is 20 and attending East Carolina University, and my little brother Grant is a sophomore at Robinson High School where I graduated from. I’m so excited for the rest of the semester in this class and experiencing the rest of UD.