As It Occurs6:30This Barbie is a hoax: Daryl Hannah groups up with pranksters to announce pretend plastic-free doll
Life in plastic won’t be so implausible in any case.
Not less than that is the message the activist Barbie Liberation Organization shared this week after they posed as toymaker Mattel to launch a fake eco-friendly doll.
The group — with assist of actress and environmental activist Daryl Hannah and satire group the Sure Males — launched the world to EcoWarrior Barbie in a press release that appeared to have originated from Mattel. The compostable “MyCelia” line of dolls could be manufactured from pure supplies like mushroom mycelium, in accordance with the discharge, as a part of Mattel’s commitments to be fully plastic-free by 2030.
An accompanying promotional video tells an actual story of an encounter Hannah had with a discarded Barbie whereas snorkeling years in the past.
What she first thought had been pink staghorn coral sticking up within the water turned out to be Barbie legs. “I pulled the Barbie out and it was lined with barnacles and coral and her hair was inexperienced with seaweed,” Hannah informed Because it Occurs visitor host Aarti Pole.
“She type of represents to me the issue that we’ve with poisoning and polluting our oceans with fossil gasoline merchandise.”
Mattel informed the CBC in an e mail that the hoax had “nothing to do” with the corporate.
The purpose of the marketing campaign, she mentioned, is to grab on the joy of the Barbie film and make customers “think about the true evolution that’s wanted — which is an evolution of what she’s truly made out of, that’s poisoning our landfills, our waterways, and our our bodies.”
Final yr, American researchers found {that a} single Barbie doll generates about 660 complete grams of carbon emissions, from manufacturing to transportation.
“Toy manufacturing is an instance of utilizing assets we’ll by no means have once more to make gadgets for short-term consumption. The lifetime of our toys exceeds our life expectancy,” Christie Klimas, affiliate professor at DePaul College and an creator of the examine, informed CBC in an e mail.
Whereas the EcoWarrior Barbie marketing campaign was a parody, Klimas estimates a whole swap of plastic for an eco-friendly materials would save about 1,152 tonnes of carbon — equal to emissions from 72 households for a whole yr — from being launched into the ambiance.
Not less than just a few information retailers had been fooled by the marketing campaign. The Washington Occasions, Folks and the Dow Jones Newswire revealed articles on EcoWarrior Barbie and the tricksters’ pretend Mattel commitments. The tales from all three publications have since been eliminated.
“The article about new Barbie dolls … was based mostly on an elaborate media hoax,” the Washington Occasions said Tuesday in an editor’s note. “We’ve got eliminated the story from our web site pending additional investigation into the origins of the hoax.” They’ve since revealed a new article in regards to the spoof.
This is not the primary time the Barbie Liberation Group has gone after Mattel. The group swapped the voice boxes of hundreds of Teen Talk Barbie and G.I Joe dolls in 1993. The tampered-with Barbies cried “Vengeance is mine!” whereas the altered Joes proclaimed “the seaside is the place for the summer time.”
In its e mail to the CBC, Mattel referenced their goal to make use of solely recycled, recyclable, or bio-based plastic supplies in each merchandise and packaging by 2030.
However whereas recycling may match for glass or metallic merchandise, Hannah says plastic recycling is not a implausible answer.
“[Only] nine per cent of all plastics that we spend our time separating and cleansing ever get recycled. And that course of in itself is kind of a chemical laden, difficult and polluting course of,” mentioned Hannah.
She added that there is not any purpose Mattel should not do “every part of their energy” to go fully plastic-free — and that the favored response to the EcoWarrior Barbie marketing campaign ought to ship a message to firms like Mattel what their clients need.
“Actually, the response was wildly enthusiastic. Nobody needs symbolic gestures anymore. We do not have time for it. We’re on the section on this planet proper now the place we’d like actual, concrete options to the crises that we face.”