Columnist Susan Snyder: Some pink charities think green

Tuesday, Oct. 15, 2002 | 8:30 a.m.

In being named National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, October is becoming the dream of marketers everywhere looking to get a jump on the gluttonous consumerism that is "the holidays."

Products, credit-card companies even grocery stores are trying to lure sales by offering to donate portions of purchase prices to breast cancer research and services.

But before you plop down $150 for a vacuum cleaner and then pin a pink ribbon to your lapel, the Think Before You Pink organization wants you to figure out who, exactly, is going to benefit.

According to the group's website, thinkbeforeyoupink.org, consumers should first find out how much money from each purchase actually goes to the cause.

For example, Eureka donates $1 from each purchase of vacuums ranging from $149.99 to $249.99. The American Express "Charge for the Cure" campaign donates a penny per transaction. Yoplait yogurt donates 10 cents for every pink foil lid mailed back by Dec. 31.

The "Think" people also warn would-be supporters to avoid letting a corporation's "pinkwashing" of products or services pull attention away from potential hazards. For example, find out whether a golf course uses cancer-causing pesticides before forking over the big bucks to play in a golf tournament benefiting breast cancer.

About 200,000 women are expected to be diagnosed with breast cancer this year. Awareness isn't the issue.

"What the breast cancer movement needs is political involvement and action," the site says. "We need more effective treatments for breast cancer, and we need to guarantee access to quality medical care for all women with the disease."

Apparently, a group of Florida property-rights advocates has pulled back its welcome mat for a group of Nevada and Oregon sympathizers who are toting a 30-foot-tall shovel and a 13-foot-tall bucket on a cross-country caravan to the Sunshine State.

According to a Miami Herald report published this month, members of Florida's Sawgrass Rebellion said they didn't associate with "militia crazies," and called off the rallies they'd planned in protest of an $8 billion plan to restore the Everglades.

Members of Elko's Jarbidge Shovel Brigade and Oregon's Klamath Bucket Brigade are somewhere in Texas and evidently plan to complete their 3,000-mile odyssey. The shovelers fought for restoration of a washed-out dirt road in a national forest north of Elko. The bucket-toters bucked a federal plan to decrease farm irrigation near Klamath Basin, Ore., to protect salmon and a rare sucker fish.

The Florida activists couldn't get a suitable site for the events, which run Thursday through Saturday, the Herald reported, and some were concerned that "extremist types might muddy the message."

I'd rather eat at one of those casino buffets where all the food is the same color than make a mistake in print.

Pass the ketchup. Friday I mentioned that Penn Jillette, of Penn & Teller, bought a tricycle during last week's Interbike convention. But the one he purchased is being made by WizWheelz, not the Australian company named in the article.

So I'm backpedaling as fast as I can.

Apologies to WizWheelz and to Penn.