Sunday, March 27, 2011

Mother Earth to Oriental Trading: Don't Try to Friend Me on Facebook

EarthDay.org
I just got the most recent Oriental Trading catalogue - an affront to the earth itself - and found myself at first amused, and then utterly incensed on behalf of our Earth Mother that they are trying to sell item after item of disposable plastic (and paper) junk in honor of... EARTH DAY.

I have just one, simple question to ask Oriental Trading: Are you fucking kidding? Does Mother Earth want you to make more trash or less trash to honor her? Why would you celebrate earth day with plastic erasers, stickers and disposable banners printed with Earth Day 2011 that will clearly only be able to be used once? And more importantly, what marketing genius thought, hey maybe we can get all those save-the-earth idiots to buy paper plates if we just print Earth Day on them?

Among the worst Earth Day offerings from Oriental "not friends of the earth" Trading:
  • Earth Day Latex Balloons, 'cause you don't need to be a junior ecologist to know balloons are totally awesome for the environment:



And last, but not least, the plastic, won't-last-five-minutes, Earth Springs:, because nothing says Earth Day like adding more useless crap to the landfill:



All this leaves me with the question... what on earth are we doing? Please tell me you know an organization celebrating Earth Day (April 22) the right way, and leave a shout out to them in the comments.

This post is recycled from Earth Day 2010 and updated to include the latest Earth Day product line extensions from OTC.

No trees were harmed in the writing of this blog post.

12 comments:

Liz Mays said...

I don't even know what to say to this!

Liz said...

Shame on whoever designed these, but double shame to the person in charge at Oriental Trading for approving these for sale!

A Mommy in the City said...

That has to be a joke! Unbelievable. The sad thing is they are probably making a fortune off of those things.

Elizabeth-FlourishInProgress said...

i just....i don't....i mean. ugh. so wrong...and you've just made it so hilarious.

Unknown said...

thank you everyone for sharing my surprise that such things are for sale. and i'm not exactly a radical person - i'm fine with OTC selling piles of plastic junk... i just draw the line at selling piles of plastic junk in honor of earth day

skramly said...

Great post. Did you meet my aunt Kathy at the wedding? She is a producer at earthday.org and the billion acts of green was her brainchild.

Unknown said...

@skramly - so cool! i dont think i did get to meet her, but hope to one day soon! we can swap stories about the OTC catalogue!

Anonymous said...

This is so true. When I was the Advisor for my school's Student Association, we ordered from OT all the time - even for the Earth Day celebrations! The irony in these choices is perfect.

One way to make an impact is to sign-in to https://www.catalogchoice.org/ to get unsigned up for any catalogues you don't want. It doesn't always work, but it's a step. (I have nothing to do with CC except being a fan.)

ReadyOrNot said...

love this, who buys this stuff?!

Christie O Tate said...

Found you on the BlogHer website. Great post. Love your tone!!! I am a follower.
Outlawmama.com

RandomHandprints said...

thanks so much for stopping by and for your kind words!

Ape Inago said...

I'm working on a tutorial for people to spread around that helps them report these silly buisnesses. Facebook has a built in way to let these companies know that its not ok to use a personal profile. If we get enough people to star reporting these desparate buisness tactics, we'll end up with no more "Friend me spam"

Here's the rough draft: https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B6-mgpvxL580ZHp4VHhPUGhoUVE

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