Corporate Responsibility

OK, ok, I know that most of you are going to think – now there’s an oxymoron, but yesterday in the local Sunday paper I happened across a full-page ad taken out by Volkswagen in which they apologize for deceiving their customers! Imagine.

"We have destroyed the most essential piece of our cars: your confidence.

We committed a huge gaff.

We have undermined your confidence,

A confidence built throughout 60 years.

Every time that you bought one of our vehicles,

You believed in us.

And now, today, we have disappointed you.

So now we are going to start with one thing:

transforming our words into acts. And we will find 

a solution for each client involved.

We are going to work with ceasing to regain

your confidence.

For more information:

www.volkswagen.ch"

99% of us are going to write it off as a great marketing ploy – and that it is.

However, do you know anyone else of the worst environmental polluters who have even bothered to acknowledge the damage they have done?

Deep water Horizon spill (BP) in the Gulf of Mexico

Amoco Cadiz oil spill

Love Canal (now Occidental Petroleum Corporation)

Not to mention Bhopal, Chernobyl and many in China, Japan, India and other countries that we hear less about, but that are just as deadly to man and animal. One for example is the e-waste graveyard in Guiyu, China where 88% (and yes that is eighty-eight percent!) of the children in the area suffer from lead poisoning!

Some have been fined – it’s all part of the business plan these days - but most have had their “dirty messes” cleaned up by public, read us the taxpayers, funds.

So even if it is a marketing ploy, they are at least doing something other than just laying the blame and passing the buck. Hopefully they will continue and follow through.