A new puppet's in town! His name is Karden, and according to his PR, he shows kids how much fun gardening can be. What parents and teachers aren't told is that he is actually amarketing tool for sewage sludge merchant Kellogg Garden Products.
Books featuring Karden, available at common bookstores, and an "Idea Factory" website devoted to him, are full of gardening activities for parents and teachers to do with their kids. Karden throws free kids' gardening events atbookstores and hardware stores.
Lisa Ely, one of the two creators of the character, is listed on a gardening website about "Karden's Corner" as "an award-winning television producer and owner of one the newest production companies in Los Angeles focused on documentary television." But while she has, indeed, produced such reality TV shows as CBS's "The Amazing Race," Discovery Channel's "Verminators," and TLC's "America's Ugliest," Ely's Facebook page lists no production company. Instead, it lists Kellogg as her employer:
Screenshot of Lisa Ely's Facebook page, 10/26/11
Lisa Ely with a bag of Kellogg's Amend (Source: Facebook)While Ely was busy producing TV shows about what creepy-crawlies are "grossest," and featuring "gnarly infestations," her latest employer, Kellogg, was busy buying composted, concentrated sewage sludge from municipalities like Los Angeles, via its "Inland Empire Regional Composting Authority," and repackaging and greenwashing it as "compost." Kellogg has been in the sludge slinging business since 1925.
Sewage sludge contains toxic and hazardous materials, including large numbers of endocrine disruptors and several heavy metals, along with carcinogenic flame retardants, pharmaceutical residues, phthalates, industrial solvents, resistant pathogens, and perfluorinated compounds, which can bioaccumulate in gardens and in the human body.
A recent test of Kellogg's Amend and Nitrohumus found high levels of cancer-causing dioxins.
"If the ingredients aren't listed, you may want to look at buying a different bag."
One of the suggested kids' activities in Karden's "Idea Factory" is choosing bagged potting soil. Karden, who's supposed to have just toured "Kellogg's soil factory," says he "learned that when shopping for potting soil, the most important thing you can do is look for a bag that lists quality ingredients and gives a satisfaction guarantee. The ingredients should be listed on the bags of soil you're buying, almost like the food you buy from the grocery store. If the ingredients aren't listed, you may want to look at buying a different bag."
Amend Ingredients (Source: Kellogg Garden Products)Although Kellogg's "Amend" product, as pictured on the kids' activity page, sports a list of ingredients, it does not list sewage sludge or even the sludge industry's Orwellian PR euphemism, "biosolids." It does list "compost."
One must look on Kellogg's website, rather than its packages, to find what is meant by "compost":
Karden was not created as a marketing tool for Kellogg and the reporter who originally posted this article never reached out to the creators and/or authors of the character. The fact that so many facts are wrong makes any logical person question the credibility of the actual report and purpose of this article. The photos you are using are also copyrighted images and you are infringing on the copyright.
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