Great Lakes Radio Consortium to launch its ‘Your Choice, Your Planet’ series in May

ANN ARBOR, Mich.— The Great Lakes Radio Consortium, the environmental news service of Michigan Radio, is launching in May Your Choice; Your Planet—an ambitious yearlong project intended to let its listeners know how everyday consumer decisions are important to the environmental health of the planet.

Environmental reporting is often limited to government regulations and industry failures. Your Choice; Your Planet will be a series of occasional reports on consumer choices and their effects on the environment.

Great Lakes Radio Consortium co-editors Mark Brush and Lester Graham say the series will reveal how consumer choices are not always as simple as they initially appear.

“The emphasis will be placed on the environmental implications of their choices without making judgments about them,” Brush says.

The series will also dispel myths about some consumer assumptions that are held by well intentioned, but misinformed, people.

Stories are planned about buying lawn care products, clothes, cosmetics, bottled water, homes, and cars plus a myriad of other consumer choices that go well beyond the question of “Paper or plastic?”

Other subjects to be covered are consumer/environmental questions like:

• Where does our food originate?
• Are pesticides more of a problem with imported produce or domestic?
• Was my beef injected with hormones, irradiated or otherwise processed?
• Are there genetically engineered ingredients in my food at the grocery store?
• What’s the difference between natural and organic? Does it really matter?
• What are the environmental costs for the type of coffee I buy?

Your Choice; Your Planet will also explore industry green washing—companies that market token efforts under the guise of protecting the environment—as well as other corporate marketing strategies.

“This series will NOT tell consumers what choices they should make,” Graham says. “Rather, the stories will tell people about the environmental implications of their choices.”

The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Your Choice; Your Planet series will begin in May 2004 and will run over the next 12 months.

More information about the GLRC is available at www.glrc.org.

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Christopher M. Williams
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