Milo, the chocolate powder product produced by Nestle, has been changing its plastic straws to paper straws with the main purpose of reducing plastic waste to help the environment. According to Chaiyong Sakulborrirug, business executive officer (2020) “Our slogan ‘For our Kids, for our Planet’ aligns with the global trend of developing environmentally friendly initiatives and reflects Nestlé’s sustainability commitment to reduce negative environmental impact by helping to develop a better world for future generations,”. It was officially launched and promoted starting the 3rd quarter of 2019. The advertisement mainly focuses on displaying its most famous product, the UHT 200 ml package. In terms of composition from top to bottom, it used a plain green on ¾ of the picture in total. A color that is both associated with the brand and with the environment. On the other ¼ it used a ripped textured white that represents paper. This paper is also not plain white but has some spots that allows the viewer to see that it is recycled. On the almost bottom-right hand is a picture of the product on a ¾ view with the straw that is the same color as the bottom textured paper. It also has white text in the top center of the picture that depicts “ Now with” in lower case letters and “ PAPER STRAWS” in upper case, and on the bottom left hand that depicts “save the planet, one sip at the time” all in lowercase in green, on top of the white recycled paper.
The main purpose for this advertisement is to broadcast to the public how the company is improving its products by upgrading the usual plastic straw with a paper one, and that by doing so the people consuming it will be helping the planet little by little or “one sip at a time”. The use of a plain green on most of the picture and a ripped paper on the bottom that looks recycled help set the stage of an environment friendly product as green is the color of leaves, grass, etc. On top of this, having the full product on a ¾ view in almost the middle, provides a feeling of a “trophy” as if it wanted the customer to appreciate it as something to be admired and for them to feel honored to be able to use it. Additionally, in terms of the text, starting with the top-middle one. The fact that one part is in lowercase and the other in upper case, is very intentional. Milo wants to highlight that they are now using “PAPER STRAWS”. Following up, with the one on the bottom left they keep the color green to generate contrast with the background, it mentions keywords that can easily impact the viewing like “save” and “one” which invites people to get involved as they can generate change in their world by doing something very simple. Using all these repetitive colors, in addition to the texts it is very effective in convincing the viewers of how they should feel and what they should do after seeing the advertisement.
Despite Nestle’s effort to promote its brand as environmentally friendly by changing the material of the straws; according to GreenPeace Philippines (2021) “The volume is relatively negligible in comparison to the amount of waste generated by Nestle products each year, especially single-use sachets and packaging. The company has consistently been among the top corporate plastic polluters in global brand audit reports.” Which demonstrates the hypocrisy of putting so much focus on straws when the company has such a large market of products and packaging that don’t even use straws and create more waste. Additionally, this complaint has followed up until last year, where according to ChemTrust (2023) “A legal complaint has been filed against major food and beverage companies Coca-Cola, Danone and Nestlé by the European Consumer Organisation, BEUC, for what they deem to be misleading claims regarding the sustainability of their products.” Here they called out Nestle’s practices and veracity of their recycling process and manufacturing of their products as it was not truly effective at all. They continued to add “They highlight that the recyclability of products depends on many factors including the effectiveness of the sorting process and availability of appropriate recycling processes. According to ClientEarth only around 9% of plastic ever produced has been recycled.”
In response to the criticism and public pressure Nestle responded “We are determined to reduce our use of single-use plastics. We are introducing reusable packaging, new delivery systems and innovative business models.“ Greenpeace (2021)
Bibliography
ChemTrust. “Legal Complaint Filed against Coca-Cola, Nestlé, and Danone over Misleading Recyclability Claims.”, November 15, 2023. https://chemtrust.org/news/recyclability-legal-complaint/.
Forbes, Graham. “Nestle: We Won’t Stop till You Drop Plastic.” Greenpeace International, April 30, 2020. https://www.greenpeace.org/international/story/21906/nestle-we-wont-stop-till-you-drop-plastic/#:~:text=In%20response%20to%20this%20public,Nestle’s%20headquarters%20in%20Mexico%20City.
Greenpeace Philippines. “Greenpeace to Nestle: Phase out Sachets, Not Just Straws.” Greenpeace Philippines, August 21, 2021. https://www.greenpeace.org/philippines/press/9962/greenpeace-to-nestle-phase-out-sachets-not-just-plastic-straws/.
Gitsga
If I’m being honest, this analysis is good, but it can dig deeper into the issue at hand. I understand that paper straws are ostensibly better for the environment than plastic straws, but I want to get into why they’re not the end all, be all eco-friendly practices. I appreciate that we get into the other ways this company is not very eco-friendly, the single use containers for example, but I do not see much regarding the greenwashing. We briefly touch on the actual use of the paper straws, but most of the focus is on how the ad looks and is laid out. To me, the main points brought up are about how the ad looks and what it is trying to accomplish. Then we talk about what Greenpeace has to say about Nestle as a company. We learn about the waste that the company produces and how the “green” practices they use are not effective in the long run. The scholarly sources used in this analysis are somewhat effective, but perhaps actual peer-reviewed papers/journals would be more effective in building an argument. The basics of this argument is good, but it would benefit from more focus on the issue and research into peer-reviewed journals would help this analysis.