Consuming Kids - 28.11.2014

Children come first.

Children influence a great amount of spending money. They have a lot of power, by begging their parents to buy them stuff. Often children succeed, but make their parents miserable. Marketers know about that influence children have, and use this for their business. Now everywhere in our environment are advertisements to persuade, mostly children, to get more stuff. Children are too easily to persuade because they don’t have enough intelligent yet to understand the whole intention of the advertisements.

Before watching this documentary, I didn’t know that children have a so big impact on the economy and business in our world. I need to admit, that the marketers are very clever by using the children for helping selling their products. Children are an important source for consuming. Now days many companies are creating lots of things that children like to get their attention.

I know that children are good in begging, because I always convinced my brother to ask our parents for something, if I would do my parents maybe won’t give me anything, but if a little child asks no one can say no.  Nevertheless, I am not happy that the marketers use the unknowledge of children for their own good. Children are too young to know the value of money. They harm us, children, by teaching us that life is about buying and getting more stuff. I now learned that life is way complicated than it already was. The mean, but clever trick from the marketers show me that I AM still a child because I’m still falling into their advertising-traps.

In the documentary, people argued about ‘no advertising to young children’ which after watching a short documentary clip I found that as a really good idea. But how bad is the effect of advertisements to young children actually facing our world? More information and with a map about the different areas and their percentages of children that get affected would help to get a better view on this topic. But if the main problem is the unknowledge of children, why don’t we teach them and protect them? If that could happen, it would be much harder to persuade young children.

Chocolate Insights - 08.10.2014

 

Save the earth!

It’s the only planet that has

chocolate.

But do you actually know how a cacao fruit look like? Or do you even know how chocolate tastes like?

Many people don’t know how a cacao fruit look like, but also many people never got the chance to taste the sweetness of a chocolate. The Video #1 asked people in Netherlands the name of this fruit :

But no one in the video recognized the cacao fruit that makes our chocolate.

The Video #2 talks about Cacao farmers, who don’t even know what would happen to their cacao beans. These people never tasted chocolate before. When they got to eat it (seen in the video), they were amazed and happy.

Before I watched these two videos, I knew how a cacao fruit look like. I was very surprised by the people who didn’t recognize it. More surprised I was about the fact that most cacao farmers don’t even know the taste of chocolate. I always thought everyone knows about chocolate. Chocolate is just wonderful.

From these videos I learned about the people who grow chocolate but were never able to eat. Also I can see the difference between the life conditions of LEDCs and the life conditions of MEDCs more clearly. I think in Europe everyone can afford a piece of chocolate but in countries that export cacao (mostly LEDCs) only few can. How can they live without chocolate? Which other things do they else not have? Why we and so many people don’t know about the farmers condition?

I was upset about the unknowledge of the cacao farmers. I wish everyone could get to eat chocolate. It’s good that we learned about the conditions of these people; to know more and to get a better view of the world outside the school.    

Also I found it a great idea of the men who interviewed the cacao farmers and gave them chocolate. It would be good to find out who (the people in an area) didn’t eat chocolate and other necessarily things. Then volunteers (in an organization) could help them to get a good life conditions as we have. People could spread the news with the chocolate (etc…), so that everyone knows about the fruit and from which condition our foods come from.

                                                                                                                                                                                Chocolate makes people happy. We should share this happiness with everyone!

Primark on the Racks - 26.09.2014

Big shops like Primark sell their goods very cheap. In other places the price would be more expensive. Clothes and goods from Primark weren't all made by machines; but in dirty, narrow streets and houses in India. Against the rule, woman and children work secretly over hours on the hardest and the most difficult clothes.                   Nevertheless, these people get paid less for their hard work.

Because of the cheap price, people like us, usually forget the effort that is put into the products when we buy something. This documentary (from BBC) critics about how poor people get cheated. They need to do all the work and only getting less money. The rest of the profit the bosses owns. We need to be aware by buying cheap goods, that it could be those things which were paid inequitable.

Before I watched this documentary, I only knew little about this topic. I noticed that cheap prices can't be true, due to the process of making it. But I thought that machines were making the goods and not people. We learned already about Fair Trade and this is a similar topic. People always cheat to get profit for themselves.

Before I didn't really care much about how things are produced. I used to buy lots of cheap stuff to save money. It didn't came in my mind that people were working hard on it. But now that I know how things are produced, who made it and how hard people are putting effort into it; I feel really guilty. I'm shocked and horrified by the truth that was hidden. I feel sorry for them. But why do people not do anything to stop the children from working? Can't anyone help these people to get their fair amount of money? How do we know which products were fair paid?

I think to stop the children from working is to persuade their families. It is a hard thing because this rule is always broken. But for helping people to get the fair amount of money, people could use globalization to spread the help and protest against this problem. If we want to know if the products are fair we could search for more evidence like in the video or the world would decide on one logo to know it's a fair product.

Personally I want to buy things fairly so that everyone could have enough for their lives, but I can't always buy expensive articles.   Try to do it, but if not at least appreciate the effort people were/are putting into your articles.

Addicted to plastic - 19.09.2014

Everything and everywhere are plastics. We need plastic in our normal day life. It is useful in many ways. But we use to much plastic and every plastic that's been made still exists. The documentary tells us about plastic suppes, which is actually our oceans. This plastic harms especially the sea animals. Sometimes they live on the toxic plastic, eat it by mistaken and die because of plastic.

 

Almost every square mile in the Pacific Ocean has about 46 000 plastic pieces. This is only the ocean, but in many other places plastic is already polluting the world. 
The position of this documentary is not that we aren't allowed to use plastic, but by what prize. We are not only harming our environment but might also poison ourselves. We should be worrying about using to much plastic. Clean environment and else depends on us, so we need to consume wisly and recycle more often.

I was already aware of using to much plastic. Every time I need to tidy up my room the plastic bin gets always fat. I knew that a lot of plastic is released into the sea but not that animals live on it. I never thought that there was a whole plastic world out there. I also know plastic can't be destroyed easily but I thought it would get melten and reused. But we need plastic. It is good and useful in lots of things. I don't like that plastic is released into the ocean but the only thing what I did to help is to reuse plastic (e.g. plastic bags) more often.

From this documentary I learned mostly about plastic in the ocean. It is creepy that there are almost more plastic pieces than organism. The documentary reminds of how much plastic we are using in a day. We really should remind ourselves and People around us to save plastic. How much plastic does the world produce each year; month ;day? A data or diagram would be good to see the difference. So that we maybe can reduce the amount of plastic that gets produced. What makes the plastic actually toxic or unbreakable? We could ask some scientists or experiment ourselves in science.

In conclusion, we should save and recycle more plastic. Every plastic piece harms our world a bit more. We should reduce the amount of using plastic a day for the sakes of other organisms.

Story of Stuff - 10.09.2014

This documentary is about a simple question 'Where does our stuff come from and where does it go? '
But if you look closer to the question it's not simple at all, it contains a whole  long hidden Story,  the Story of Stuff.

This is the cycle of material economy. It is about producing, buying and consuming things. But we are running out of resources, and the probleme is that we actually don't use as much as we produce. So we are cutting down OUR environment to only put it in the bin after 6 months. This is waste of resources and money and work and time. But that is not everything, we are also polluting OUR world with chemicals that we put into OUR stuff. We are harming ourselves by bringing toxic into our home and our bodies. Now also babies get toxic through milk. Is that what we want?  
The thing is that we need to start to saving more and to recycle more. Think before buying waste into our homes. Do I really need this or do I through it away after 2 weeks?

The important thing of this documentary is that people see how badly we affect our lives . This documentary gives us honest and true facts that (hopefully) make us feel guilty and responsibel. We should be aware of the value of an object. It takes much work and effort from other people to make it, even though it could be a low price.

Before watching the video, I knew that we, humans, buy and waste much. But I didn't know that we wasting SO much! Every child knows that we are destroying our environment ourselves and therefore our resources. But not every child knows that they are playing with  chemically - toxic toys.
I never liked that human cutting down the world only for stuff that makes them happy for a short time. My opinion always was that:

"Things that you really need for surviving or for a normal day life you can still use. You can buy everything what you REALLY need. But if you buy to much stuff for only a short entertainment, then it's a really stupid action. It's wasting money! Money for that my parents need to do all the hard work. I am/was a child like everybody else. And I liked to have many toys and I really had many- more than a kindergarden. But my parents taught me and my brother about to saving money for a better use. They told me about the third world and I can't waste more money when I think about people who can't afford a good meal to eat. My parents also taught me to understand und feel how hard these people need to work to make stuff for us. I needed to understand the value of the things I have - and I understood.
It makes me crazy when I saw a whole mountain gone. My own very eyes saw in Viet Nam a beautiful mountain gone. It hurts so much to lose every time a bit of nature in the world."

 

 

I learned new things from this documentary such as:

 

• From 100% that we bought we only use 1%. The 99% goes after 6 month into the bin.
• Nowdays things are designed dumb, so that they quickly break. Therefore people will need to buy a new one. That is devilish clever.
• Perceived obsolescence plays a big job. People always want to be cool - mode. "If he has this cool iphone 5s I also need one." But it's not as good and valuable as the old things.
• But advertisments make us to buy it. But when we bought it does it makes us happy?

My opinion only expand. I am terrified by the toxic in and toxic out. I was really upset with the government! How can they only care about money and not about the peoples lives as they supposed to be. The Third World needs help. But how can the government help them? I don't think putting them into a factory is a good idea. What about the toxic? How can we avoid things that are toxic for us when everything is toxic?  How can we persuade the big company not to produce so much useless stuff anymore? Who should persuade them? How can we protect the nature in the world? How can we get more resources? How can we tell the world to save and not to buy?

 



 

People created , so people can change it



 

Food Inc - 29.08.2014

Fast food poisons human bodies. But fast food is cheap, cheaper than healthy foods, and that makes it out for people. Plus people often buy fast food because they don’t have the time to cook. Nowadays more and more people get diabetes, because of eating to much unhealthy food.

Fast food is just incredible bad for our bodies. The purpose of this documentary is to show the people how fast food destroys people’s life, eg. A little child ate a hamburger and died. People should see the terror and avoid eating more unhealthy food.

 

Before I watched the documentary, I knew that fast food is very bad in lots of different ways. But when I (sometimes) do eat fast food, I forgot about the consequences. So this documentary actually refreshed my memory about ‘bad fast food’.

What touches me most about this documentary is how poor people can’t afford eating healthy food and the rising amount of people getting diabetes.

In the documentary they should have explained about ‘what makes the fast food so unhealthy’ so people have a evidence that it is really bad.   

                  What are you choosing?