The second series of My Family and the Galapagos is airing on C4 on Sunday evenings.   Having written to complain about the Nestlé sponsorship and how I felt it had influenced the show’s message about plastic waste,   I was pleased to see that the new series has a different sponsor.

Thanks for listening C4!

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4th August 2018

My message :
Letter for publication: This is how sponsorship works….My family and the Galapagos 

Having recently visited the Galapagos I watched My family and the Galapagos –  a bit nervous because I could see it was sponsored by Nestlé.  Thankfully it was brave enough to show the plastic washed up on some of its beaches and named Nestlé, Coca Cola and Colgate among the brands.  But what a shame this message was undone with a comment  ‘These companies all have policies in place to reduce their plastic footprint but we all have to take responsibility too…’   that played right into industry’s whitewashing tactic: promote its here-today gone-tomorrow unmeasurable promises and shift the blame (and attention) away from corporate malpractice to individual action.

Nestlé lobbies governments to weaken essential legislation and spends about $9 billion a year persuading us to ditch traditional, culturally appropriate foods (life-saving breastfeeding, tap water, etc) and to switch to ultra-processed, plastic packaged (often single serve) globally-traded  products (1).  OK, lets welcome any steps in the right direction, but what’s really needed is exactly what the corporations  don’t want – strict regulation and taxation of harmful practices.

Patti Rundall, OBE, Policy Director, Baby Milk Action/ IBFAN UK,  prundall@babymilkaction.org

(1) Report on Carbon Footprints Due to Milk Formula: a study from selected countries of the Asia-Pacific region© BPNI / IBFAN Asia 2015.   http://ibfan.org/docs/Carbon-Footprints-Due-to-Milk-Formula.pdf