Top candy sellers make big bucks during Halloween by exploiting people and the planet and our purchases are only helping them succeed
We spend over half a billion dollars on Halloween candy each year, generating big bucks for large corporations that are more frightening than the holiday itself. Child labour, unfair treatment of workers and detrimental environmental impacts are just some of the unethical practices the top winners of Halloween such as Mars, Nestle, Lindt and Hershey, participate in.
Several high-profile cases have revealed chocolate and candy manufacturers indirectly or directly benefit from forced and child labor. For example, cocoa plantations in West Africa, which supply major chocolate makers including Mars, Nestle and Hershey, have faced allegations of using child labor in hazardous conditions.
More specifically, excessive plastic packaging used by these corporations also contributes to global plastic pollution crisis, especially since they often use non-biodegradable materials that end up in landfills or oceans.
The palm oil industry, frequently used in the production of chocolate products, has also been significantly associated with deforestation and habitat destruction. Many of the aforementioned companies source palm oil from unsustainable suppliers, such as those involved in illegal land clearing, further contributing to this issue.
On top of this, there have also been instances of workplace discrimination and unfair compensation among these corporations. Employees, particularly in lower-wage positions, may experience wage disparities and discriminatory practices based on their gender, ethnicity or other factors.
While we enjoy a short-lived moment of joy, indulging in the sweet treats of Halloween, these companies get away with exploiting other communities across the world, depriving individuals of their human rights.
While we enjoy a short-lived moment of joy, indulging in the sweet treats of Halloween, these companies get away with exploiting other communities across the world, depriving individuals of their human rights.
As consumers, we need to recognize that when we support these companies through our high volumes of purchases at Halloween, this choice ultimately drives their sales, profits and their ability to maintain their unethical operations into the future. Our decisions contribute to the consistent perpetuation of these business practices, and we have the power to hold these major corporations accountable.
Although creating such large-scale change seems daunting, it’s our collective efforts that matter. For one, consider doing some research into and choosing ethical brands as much as possible. Prioritize businesses with transparent and ethical practices, such as those that support fair labour, use sustainable materials and have a commitment to social responsibility/ESG.
In addition, take the opportunity to support local businesses. Opt for local costume shops, bakeries, and artisans who often maintain higher ethical and quality standards due to their smaller and community-focused scale.
To further prevent corporations from perpetuating harms, express your concerns to businesses that may be involved in these unethical practices. Consumer feedback can lead to positive change and get more people involved in supporting the greater cause.
While Halloween is meant to be an exciting break during the fall season, it is also a day to reflect on the consequences of our consumer choices.
By being conscious consumers, we can send a message to businesses that we value ethical and responsible practices. Let’s focus on enjoying Halloween with awareness and ensure that the season's treats and tricks don't come at the expense of people, the planet or our own ethical values.
By being conscious consumers, we can send a message to businesses that we value ethical and responsible practices. Let’s focus on enjoying Halloween with awareness and ensure that the season's treats and tricks don't come at the expense of people, the planet or our own ethical values.
C/O Heidi Fin, Unsplash
Save a little more and spend a little less, your OSAP savings will thank you
Just hear those sale signs jingling, ring ting tingling too. Come on, it’s lovely weather for a day out shopping with you! The holidays are just around the corner, clearly indicated by the new red and green Starbucks cups, ridiculously gigantic Christmas trees in store-fronts and most important of all, the “door-crashing” sales in shopping malls.
Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Boxing Day, though surprising how they came to be when you think about it, effectively offer North America with excuses to splurge on clothing, toys and other items that they “might use.”
It’s interesting because, throughout the year, it is easy to witness many folks treading carefully with regards to their spending habits but the holiday season will have you whole-heartedly believing that emptying out your savings account is the best way to go.
You can’t really blame the general public though, can you? I mean, corporations do quite a good job of reeling in the customers. How are we expected to walk away from Caramel Brulée lattes, red flannel pyjamas and Winter Candy Apple candles?
For most of the developed world, these select holiday items are the prime marker for enjoying the holiday season. It’s just not Christmas without going on a shopping spree for yourself and the people that made it onto your gift list.
Multinational corporations exploit the vulnerability of consumers at this time and have spectacularly transformed the ability to cause confusion between necessity and desire into a fine art. This often causes individuals to get lost in the excitement of it all and forget to pay any mind to the negative effects consumerism can entail.
Before we get into that though, what exactly is consumerism?
If you haven’t guessed it already, consumerism is essentially the purchasing of market goods and resources. More importantly, it’s a technique used by capitalist societies where suppliers are ever-producing to meet the demands of the general public, or the consumers.
It is much more prevalent in Western societies where there is often codependency between our personal identities and the items that we purchase.
In fact, according to economists, the driving force behind the steady increase of consumerism is the phenomenon of Americanization, otherwise known as the ‘manipulation of preferences’. It is important to note, however, that the market seldom invents new desires — they simply give existing desires a new form to make them more appealing.
This phenomenon effectively feeds into consumerism and creates an extreme version of itself: hyperconsumerism.
A variety of different factors, including the holiday season, can help normalize the dangers of consuming beyond what we need while ignoring the mental, physical and environmental effects. For large corporations, hyperconsumerism comes at the cost of violating workers’ rights since these capitalist markets often treat human rights infractions as collateral damage.
It also goes without saying that, as the demands for consumer products increase, so does the need to produce more and this inevitably leads to an increase in pollutant emissions, exploitation of natural resources and accelerated climate change.
Did you know that the wealthiest 10 per cent are responsible for consuming 59 per cent of the world’s resources? Ironically, they are not the ones experiencing the effects of climate change; it’s the bottom half of the population that is affected.
Now, I can’t possibly advise you to ditch the shopping malls and ignore Black Friday Sales altogether. Most individuals will invest time in figuring out a solution that allows them to continue consuming at the same rate while dodging the effects that hyperconsumerism has.
Ethical consumerism calls upon the consumer to critically analyze their favourite brands and products before making a purchase. However, it’s no secret that purchasing from ethical brands can be expensive and is not a solution that’s accessible to everyone.
Before making a purchase, consider its versatility, quality and whether it will stick with you in the long run. Limit impulsive SHEIN haul orders to conform with trends and instead look for basic clothing items that offer more flexibility.
If you want wide-legged jeans, go for it — just make sure they’ll last and you don’t relieve the store of its entire denim section. I want them too.
Cassandra Jeffery
The Silhouette
There are very few places, if any, that are completely untouched by the rapid modernization that has come to overwhelm much of the globe.
North American culture, for example, is largely based on a capitalist system that reinforces the spread of globalization. We’ve become not only fully immersed within a globalized, cultural context but we’ve also grown numb to the ramifications of capitalist ventures and the intrusiveness of globalization. For us, living in Canada, we’re exposed and all too familiar with the consistent influx of McDonalds or Starbucks.
Speaking for the general population at McMaster, I can say that all of us have access to a modern form of communication. Most of us lay claim to a cell phone or laptop, both of which can access various media and communication outlets.
We have, practically, instant and constant access to the Internet. Google has made it possible to see a street level view of a German city while sitting in a lecture hall here at McMaster. Although I’m still astounded at the speed in which technology is accelerating our ability to connect with the rest of the world, I have certainly taken for granted some of the benefits that come along side of globalization.
Globalization discourages cultural and national ignorance. With the world literally at our fingertips we, as global citizens living in Canada, have the ability to discover diverse perspectives while enjoying the comforts of home. Although I can’t speak for everyone, I certainly can’t claim ignorance when I can easily research something on the Internet. Borders have become less tangible as we move fluidly through the globe’s nations and cultures portrayed on our computer screens.
In a more literal sense, globalization encourages travel. As I learn about these fascinating places in the world I begin to yearn for the physical experience. Traveling puts your world, your culture, and your experiences into a different perspective. Taking yourself out of what is subjectively normal and placing yourself into a whirlwind of new customs, cultural practices, and ideologies can be overwhelming, challenging, yet eminently enriching.
Globalization has also walked hand-in-hand with industrialization and modernization. Although I cringe to see yet another corporate conglomerate plant its roots in our already capitalist weeded soil, there are benefits to bringing industrialization and modernization into the metaphorical garden. Influencing economic stability, national capital, and employment, industrialization maintains a level of prosperity.
And, I’m sure we’d be reluctant to give up our vehicles, cell-phones, and central heating in return for a “simpler” lifestyle. Globalization has encouraged industrialization and modernization across the globe, which has, in some ways, beneficially impacted national economic, political and social standing. However, what is to be said against globalization, industrialization, and modernization?
As globalizations encourages a surge of eager travellers, typically the wealthy and middle-class populations of the world, the more traditional areas of the world and the predominantly poverty stricken global citizens are vulnerable in that they become fetisized by world travellers and exploited by money hungry industrial ventures. The land and the people of these un-familiar areas of the world are worked down and forcibly pushed into the path of globalization.
Being sucked into the vortex of capitalism in the name of modernization, we are to assume that this development is natural—an unexplainable, self governing force that simply exists. However, it was Karl Marx who pointed out that our fixation with commodities, and all of the elements that are attributed with consumerism, is a product of our society that we, the global citizens, perpetuated. The spread of industrialization and capitalist ideologies in a country such as Cambodia, for example, creates a social constructed hierarchy of the oppressed worker and the commodity consumer.
There’s something romantically simplistic about the areas of the world that seem to have withheld from aspects of globalization. When I was travelling through Croatia this past June I was surprised to see that the country did not have the typical western icons of globalization.
There were no franchises of McDonalds or Burger King, there were no large western corporations, and although Croatia is a modernized, industrialized country, I couldn’t help but feel pleasure in the fact that this small country, in relation to the rest of Europe, was able to fight off a metaphorical, iconic representation of globalization. On the contrary, Croatia recently joined the European Union and no doubt will this membership into the EU bring beneficial national growth, however with such improvements must come the inescapable spread of globalization.
Switching my focus to Southeast Asia, I fear for the beautiful yet still mysterious country of Laos. Nestled in between Vietnam, Thailand, Myanmar and Cambodia the country, from what I have seen on television and in research, is left for the most part untouched by industrialization. The country remains frozen in time, unchanged from a century ago.
Yet, it seems globalization is inevitable. Industrialization and modernization will eventually make its way to Laos. Tourists will choose Laos as their next exotic travel destination, the country and her people will imminently change as outside influence becomes more prevalent and capitalist ideologies flourish.
The pessimism I have for the globalized world is troubling although I hold little faith in the world`s ability to alter our chosen path. If the spread of modernization and industrialization is inevitable all I can do is explore and understand these untouched areas of the world before they become generic viagra soft consumed.
We tend to take the good in globalization and seem to forget about the bad and at the end of the day we are left wondering, do the ends really justify the means?
Graciela Analiz
Things are looking dismal out there. We’re more materialistic than ever; we can’t tell the difference between needs and wants and we equate happiness with material goods. And despite the rather pessimistic view of what has become of us, I’ve noticed something over the past few years—I’ve become a little less attached to stuff.
I wasn’t the only one with this inkling. The Journal of Consumer Research noticed it back in 2007, when Lan Nguyen Chaplin and Deborah Roedder John conducted a study looking at materialism in children and adolescents. It so happens that between ages 8 and 13 our lust for possessions reaches all-time highs, but by late adolescence this lust begins to decline.
This brought me back to the good ol’ tween years, the age I thought (rather naïvely) that I could make myself twenty times better than I actually was. I was hopeful, maybe too hopeful, and definitely too idealistic. This is exactly what advertising takes advantage of - presenting us with an ideal self. They don’t want us to be content with who we currently are and what we own. It’s not surprising then why they flock to this age group.
But getting older has this thing of thwarting these sorts of hopes. So you get more realistic and realize that this is about as good as it’s going to get. Sure, you and I, and a whole lot of other people are still figuring it out, but with time we grow more comfortable with ourselves and plant our feet a little firmer to the ground. It’s not that advertising stops working altogether, consumerism is enough evidence against that, but it loses a bit of its edge.
The surer we are about ourselves the less effective advertising is, and advertising is, after all, what fuels materialism.
Mind you, becoming a little less attached to worldly possessions doesn’t suddenly make me an ascetic. The passage of time won’t ever completely heal us of our materialistic ways.
But in this age and generation characterized by the incessant need to have, getting older and a little less materialistic is a victory, a small one, but a victory nonetheless.
Sarah O'Connor
Thanksgiving is over and as the last leftovers of turkey slowly depart from our refrigerators, a new holiday is quickly approaching: Halloween.
Yes, Halloween. A night to dwell into the supernatural, to stay up late watching horror movies, to dress-up and be something you're not. It's the one night we allow ourselves to re-kindle those warm feelings of childish glee from Halloween. We stuff our face with chocolate and don’t have to worry when our next exam is due.
But like anything that brings the slightest bit of joy, Halloween comes with a price.
Even D.O.T. Patio and Home have gotten into the spirit of Halloween by selling costumes and accessories for that haunted evening. And as I've wandered through that store on lazy afternoons, I can't help but notice one thing - the price of the costumes.
The price range for most women's Halloween costumes is between forty to sixty dollars. And let's be honest with ourselves, there isn't much to them. A typical woman's costume is sexy and sparkling with tight-fit tops and skirts that look like belts. A skimpy thing like that for sixty dollars? I don't think so.
On the other hand, the price range for men's costumes is typically between $20 - $40. True, there isn't as much variety as there is for women's costumes, the costumes tend to focus more on pop-culture or being hilarious parodies instead of being sexy. But people seem to care greatly about what they will wear on Halloween night, no matter the price.
It's not just D.O.T., all companies that sell adult Halloween costumes have these prices. We allow companies to commercialize holidays that are dear to our hearts. We empty our pockets on the conviction that by doing so we ensure the greatest night of our lives, when all we really have an over-priced costume hanging in our closets only to be replaced by a new, over-priced costume next year.
We always mourn the commercialization of Christmas but what ever happened to Halloween? What happened to the night of chills and thrills, of fear and excitement? What happened to a holiday about fun? When did money start ruling our lives?
