DuPont. Here’s just a little tidbit:
Between 2007 and 2014 there were 34 accidents resulting in toxic releases at DuPont plants across the U.S., with a total of eight fatalities.[93] Four employees died of suffocation in a Houston, Texas, accident involving leakage of nearly 24,000 pounds (11,000 kg) of methyl mercaptan.[94] As a result, the company became the largest of the 450 businesses placed into the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s “severe violator program” in July 2015.
In Anniston, Alabama, plaintiffs in a 2002 lawsuit provided documentation showing that the local Monsanto factory knowingly discharged both mercury and PCB-laden waste into local creeks for over 40 years.[220] In 1969 Monsanto dumped 45 tons of PCBs into Snow Creek, a feeder for Choccolocco Creek, which supplies much of the area’s drinking water, and buried millions of pounds of PCB in open-pit landfills located on hillsides above the plant and surrounding neighborhoods.
These are the kind of companies that inspired the cartoon villains of the 1980s that just dump pollution because.
DuPont is also responsible for Teflon, which is what’s typically used in “non-stick” cookware. It’s unclear what its long-term effects are (I.e. if it’s even safe to cook with), and it’s also one of those lovely forever chemicals that doesn’t break down properly.
Bad bad bad.
I’ve read a bit about Teflon. My understanding is that the big health hazard is during the application process, primarily for the factory workers - you really don’t want to breath aerosolized uncured Teflon, or get it in your eyes. It’s not the most hazardous industrial chemical out there, I don’t think there’s any particular ethical issue with manufacturing products with Teflon as long as workers are provided PPE. If it’s a sweatshop product well then there are obviously a lot of ethical issues.
Once it’s cured it’s chemically inert (which is kind of the whole point) - I’m not aware of any research showing that the human body can absorb any harmful chemicals from cured Teflon - basically your stomach acid and digestive tract bacteria can’t do anything to it. You shouldn’t worry overmuch about being harmed by cooking in a Teflon-coated pan, it’s not a heavy metal or anything like that.
That said, a deteriorating Teflon coating can be a hazard. The material is fairly stiff and again, your digestive system can’t break it down. Any small particles should (hopefully) pass through, but larger flakes could get stuck somewhere and then… well your body can’t break it down. It’s going to be there causing a blockage until something dislodges it, it’s not going to bend very much, and it might have sharp enough edges to irritate or damage the surrounding tissue.
And yeah, nothing breaks it down naturally, so it is just going to be in the world forever, gradually eroding into smaller and smaller particles along with all of the other plastic pollution, so yay.
I can’t point to any specific sources on this, it’s from reading various articles over two decades, I’m definitely not an authority.
That said, a deteriorating Teflon coating can be a hazard
This is my concern. I don’t know if I’m just being too rough with my cookware, but in my experience, non-stick coating (Teflon included) doesn’t tend to last longer than a few months before deteriorating. Which then requires more substantial cleaning to remove stuck-on food, which further damages the coating, and so on and so forth.
Find it’s better to just avoid the stuff entirely, but there’s a lot of cookware that you can’t easily get in a non-non-stick format. Specifically muffin tins and air fryers. I’ll stop there before this turns into a rant…!
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1142333/
The US chemical giant DuPont learned its lesson of Bhopal in a different way. The company attempted for a decade to export a nylon plant from Richmond, VA to Goa, India. In its early negotiations with the Indian government, DuPont had sought and won a remarkable clause in its investment agreement that absolved it from all liabilities in case of an accident.
The Bhopal disaster was Union Carbide and then Dow Chemicals baby, but as this paper points out, companies like DuPont learned some particularly evil things from it.
Monsanto gets so much worse than polluting. They tried (succeeded? Not sure) in hooking farmers to only buying their seeds through genetic modification to grow anything. I remember huge protests, then we all sort of moved on.
Terminator seeds are not GMO, they are regular hybrid seeds. If you’ve ever grown anything from a seed, you’d know the difference between hybrids and heirlooms.
Ah the old terminator seeds.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_use_restriction_technology
In a similar vein:
There’s at least a chance that PepsiCo’s patented potatoes had gotten into the worldwide supply on accident and it really was no fault of these farmers for growing patented food.
Also similarly, varieties of apples are also patented.
If you haven’t seen documentary The Corporation, you must watch it . Amongst other things It explains how there really cannot be any non shitty corporations - so you have to look really hard to find small business that meet your needs.
The concept of “shareholder value” from the Milton Friedman playbook coldly permits any behaviour that increase profits.
Side note, Milton Friedman wasn’t just an evil fuck, he was also in many ways kind of dumb as shit.
His “four ways of spending money” is a prime example.
He claims the fourth way (spending somebody else’s money on somebody else) is how the government works, and thus it’s wasteful, but what he fails to fucking account for is with how large most corporations are that the fourth way of spending money is effectively how corporations work, too. Some bean counter in accounting and some finance guys and a variety of middle managers are all spending somebody else’s money (the company’s money) on someone else (the whims of the CEO and the board).
He holds this example up as showing how government spending is always bad and inefficient and how corporate spending isn’t, but he’s a dumbfuck, they’re actually the same.
I wish I believed in Hell, because the idea of Milton Friedman getting raked over hot coals for eternity is extremely satisfying.
I think we’d compile a shorter list if we tried to name wholesome, respectable companies.
Nah, we have loads of great companies here in the UK.
Didn’t the UK develop the first large evil corporation?
among more brutality around the world, yes
It sure did!
Any franchise or corporation that makes their religion known. So fuck chick fil a, hobby lobby, and in n out.
Any local small business with political signs or flags, or religious things on full display as well.
Does In-N-Out do hateful religious stuff like Chick-Fil-A does?
Not that I’m aware of but they do print Bible verses on their stuff and at this point fuck even that.
All I know about is they put things like “John 3:16” on the packaging, but it’s tiny and usually in a hard to see place. On the cups it used to be on the inside of the bottom rim. I’m sure they donate to religious organizations.
That said, in-n-out consistently pays ABOVE minimum wage and treat their workers very well. Prices also haven’t gone up like other places. So with them, unless I find out they have a specifically evil viewpoint I’ve been unaware of, then just being religious gets a pass.
They’re good burgers, Walter.
Disagree, I wouldn’t instantly say that any gay bar is bad because “it states its political views”. More like, any business that supports a facist, or is clearly religous.
I’m not sure I would like to go to any bar or fast food place or anything like that, if they promoted their political views out in the open like that. Even if they perfectly alined with mine. I just don’t want to see any of that, i’m there for the service and product.
Cool. I was talking about religion. Gay people have a right to exist and if a bar is friendly for them, so be it. There are other bars.
Chic Fil A is not trying to merely appeal to those of their own beliefs only. They are willingly taking anyone’s money and turning around and using that for religious zealotry. In fact, the example you bring up feels extra fucked considering that fucking company goes out of its way to donate to anti-LGBTQ organizations.
Thr right will tell a basketball player to “shut up and dribble” and a burger joint oughta only make fucking burgers then.
Cultural issues =/= politics
What do you think politics are?
My point is that a place can still be not political while supporting objectively good social movements.
The personal is political
For the big makers of pseudo-science based bullshit medicine, see Weleda (naturopathy, anthroposophy) and Boiron (homeopathy).
Palantir is pretty core to the Surveillance Society in several supposedly Democratic countries. More in general just about all companies in that space such as the NSO Group makers of the Pegasus software for remote hacking of smartphones are invariably unethical
Similarly the whole business of Investment Banking is pretty unethical, and that definitely includes most Hedge Funds, the latter never being household names.
Bank of New York Melon
Adobe.
If the company you work for is bought by Alpine Investments, get a lawyer. Especially if you’re a woman or expect severance when they ditch you.
Anduril, Palmer Luckey’s foray into military hardware and an ever-present surveillance state. Some of the first hardware they rolled out were surveillance towers for the US border patrol.
So Mark Zuckerberg officially isn’t the only giant pile of shit connected to Oculus, the original owner is a fucking pile of shit, too.
Trader Joe’s is also thought of by many people as “progressive” and a “good company.” Go learn about the conditions in their warehouses and you’ll find out that’s not true at all. I had a friend who worked TJ’s warehouse in Lacey, WA and all he had was fucking horror stories and how the warehouse was owned and run by MAGA fucks.
EDIT: Found the article my friend was excited about coming out that didn’t seem to get any MSM traction.
Inside ‘Teflon Joe’s’: Why your favorite grocery store is not what you think
How Trader Joe’s remains a beloved brand despite record product recalls, safety violations, worker misconduct complaints, and an environmental record that belies its reputation.
So yeah fuck Trader Joe’s.
Oh yeah and the CEO of Protonmail revealed himself to be a Trump supporter.
So fuck Protonmail.
The Brave browser CEO recently went on an hinged rant on that orange site about “lefties,” “glowies,” and George Soros. He also has a long history of being anti-gay, which is why he lost his job at Firefox, and Brave itself has a shady history with stuff like injecting affiliate codes into URLs.
So fuck Brave.
That’s a shame about Brave, does anyone have an reccomendations for another browser that reduces digital fingerprinting in a similar way?
Stopped shopping at Trader Joe’s after their anti union shenanigans. Shame because we love their food
I have found a small amount of Trader Joe’s food labelled under different brand names at WinCo. Same companies producing the food, just boxed and bagged with a different name.
To be clear, WinCo also has it’s own issues.
Let’s keep that surveillance state alive because nothing screams democracy like never trusting anyone!
Anduril, Palmer Luckey’s foray into military hardware and an ever-present surveillance state. Some of the first hardware they rolled out were surveillance towers for the US border patrol.
Same vibe as Palantir by Peter Thiel, big data analytics platform used by many defense/security organizations. Far right pseudo-libertarians love abusing Tolkien’s lore, sadly.
IMO most of the suggestions here are small beer.
If you want to be very scientific about this, and to calculate cumulative sums of harm, with no discount for the future, then just look for some little-known hydrocarbons corp - it will top the list.
If you apply a future discount, but no discount (or a small one) for the suffering of non-human animals, then some meat company will probably top the list.
All restaurants
From under-staffing, to threatening managers to do more with less, to refusing to allow resources for security. They treat people like shit, their customers like shit, and try to undercut their suppliers which leads to half ass quality goods.
Last Week Tonight did a story about dollar stores:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=p4QGOHahiVM
Yeah, they’re as bad as you’d expect.
Isn’t this the entire “dollar store” industry? My understanding was that these kinds of thing were the entire reason that business model was profitable. Or does this company do it worse than say dollar general or something does?
Its worse than you would think…
Not the video I was looking for but it proves the point…
Uline comes to mind
Worked a contract job for them. Would agree.
They are the reason I think I severely underestimate that sucess rate of junk mail. They essentially mail me a phone book 5 times a year ro my home and my office and I have ordered exactly zero products from them ever.
It can’t be cheap to send all those catalogs, so they must work.
so they must work.
hopefully that assumption will remain until it bankrupts them.
They really have everything to supply an office or a warehouse. Procurement can use a single vendor for almost everything they need.
It’s a solid business model.
I get that, but why the 4lb, 800-page books sent to millions of people a multiple times a year just to end up in the trash without ever being opened? 90+ percent of their orders have to be digital where they just search the website.
Knauf. They produce drywall boards, among other building materials. You probably dwell a home where these products are built in. Excerpt from linked Wikipedia article:
In 2022, after the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, Yale University published a list of companies that chose to remain active in Russia. According to this report, over 600 companies have withdrawn from Russia — but some remain. Knauf is still operating across 14 sites in Russia but has claimed to have suspended new investments.[5].
In November 2023 Ukraine listed Knauf as an International Sponsor of War for promoting mobilisation in Russia by sending its employees to the war against Ukraine.[6].
According to German public-service broadcaster ARD, Knauf has been active in collaborating with the Russian military in its construction efforts in the Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine.[7][8]Another source (German), 2024 states, that due to investigation of a news outlet, they allegedly withdrew their actions.
Withdrawal in response to ARD investigation?
Only recently, the plaster company from Lower Franconia hit the headlines because of its activities in Russia: Research by the ARD magazine “Monitor” suggested that Knauf had violated EU sanctions against Russia. Whether the withdrawal from Russia is connected to the allegations made was neither confirmed nor denied by the company to BR24 today and a press spokeswoman did not wish to comment on the matter in response to a written request.They probably wanted to have a foot in the door when it comes to rebuilding, when the war will be over finally.
Another, probably more known company is Claas, a manufacturer of farming equipment like combine harvesters and such. Another source (German), 2023 claims
The company condemns Russia’s attack on Ukraine, said Mohr. Nevertheless, Claas cannot and does not want to withdraw from one of the world’s most important agricultural regions. “Both countries are enormously important for feeding the world’s population. That’s why farming must continue there,” Mohr told the SZ newspaper, adding that harvesting machines were essential for this.
