Care2<\/a> site? Mom, gas hurts the earth.”<\/p>\nWe have a car. We use gas. But he now asks questions about gas. And cars. He likes transport. He worries about gas.<\/p>\n
“Hmmm?” I got up and stepped over to take a look. “That’s an ad for a Suzuki XL7 SUV. They’re giving away a $25 gas card to those who go in for a test drive.”<\/p>\n
“But mom! What are they doing advertising things that hurt the earth at a place that’s supposed to help the earth?”<\/p>\n
Good question, H.o.p. Does a website that exists for the purpose of aiding in protecting the environment have an ethical obligation to not promote such cars as a Suzuki XL7 SUV, which I read gets 18 mpg in town and 22 on the road, ideally and has an EPA air pollution rating of 7 on a scale of 1 to 10 where 0 is screaming, “We hate the earth and all its creatures! We feel evil to the tips of our tippy-toes!” I only know this because H.o.p. asked me a question and I wanted to look up the car’s environmental impact as compared to other cars, so we could talk about whether or not the owners of the website felt with these ads they were promoting a car that was less harmful than others.<\/p>\n
But H.o.p. isn’t even talking about car models, he’s gasping over any ads at all for gas and cars being on a website where he makes clicks for saving wetlands and rain forest, among other things.<\/p>\n
Anyway, it’s a good question for him to ask.<\/p>\n
And I’m glad he is attentive enough to be thinking about things like this. To see an ad come up and say, “Hey, what does this mean in relationship to the website I’m on?”<\/p>\n
He’s thinking!<\/p>\n
Sure, I know, I know, other kids think as well. But I love to see my child’s brain in action this way. That’s excellent when he’s able to look at a website he trusts and say, “Does this fit in with their mission?”<\/p>\n
P.S.<\/strong><\/p>\nAnyway, so how did I answer his question. I told him I thought it was a great one. I told him what I read about the car. I said that Care2 promotes itself as promoting a Green lifestyle and Green products. I said that, honestly, I couldn’t think of how this particular car and free gas cards fit into that Green mission. Did he think it fit?<\/p>\n
I then went to take a look at the shoppers page at Care2, which I’d not done before. Care2 has a broad number of “shopping partners” that one wouldn’t think of as being eco-friendly. Here’s what they have to say about it:<\/p>\n
Why do our shopping partners include both eco-friendly and non-eco-friendly stores?
\nThis is a great question – why on earth would we include in our list of affiliate ecommerce sites companies that are not entirely eco-friendly or may even use sweat shops to produce their products? The answer is two fold:<\/p>\n
* We want our members to visit their sites! Why? Because when Green Thumbs-Up users visit those sites they’ll see a Yellow or Red icon to let them know the poor social and\/or environmental policies the company has. If they weren’t in our list, most folks would probably never know. We hope the icons will educate our members so they can make an informed decision whether or not to shop there.<\/p>\n
* Sometimes, for whatever reason, some of our members are still going to shop at those companies. If they’re going to do it, they might as well at least generate some donations to help heal the Earth. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n
“We ought to give them a call and tell them that ad doesn’t fit in with their website,” H.o.p. said.<\/p>\n
I told him what they have to say on their website.<\/p>\n
We’re still talking.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
From when he was knee-high, I’ve been telling H.o.p. about ads. What ads want from you. What they want to sell you. I tell him about the relationship between ads and some of the websites he visits. Like Neopets. I ever remind him that those sites want something from him, which is all the time […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[424,377,378,129,426],"class_list":["post-1398","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-everyday-stories","tag-a","tag-consumerism","tag-environmentalism","tag-h-o-p-quotes-conversational-arts","tag-social-studies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/idyllopuspress.com\/meanwhile\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/idyllopuspress.com\/meanwhile\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/idyllopuspress.com\/meanwhile\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idyllopuspress.com\/meanwhile\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idyllopuspress.com\/meanwhile\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1398"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/idyllopuspress.com\/meanwhile\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1398\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/idyllopuspress.com\/meanwhile\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idyllopuspress.com\/meanwhile\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idyllopuspress.com\/meanwhile\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}