You know what, you have a good point. It’s not really productive for me to focus so much on the particular percentage. The important part of ‘Giving what we can” here is “what we can,” and I think basically any nonzero percentage is great, and it’s a very personal decision and you’re right that needling people over numbers is bad.

But I don’t think you are right to say that most people are so financially insecure that they cannot give any money away at all. Actually, most Americans (typically something like 60%) do give to charity, and the bottom fifth in wealth donate the highest proportion of their wealth (about 4.5% iirc). In high-income countries a median income makes you somewhere among the richest 5% of people on Planet Earth. By their own admission, 90% of working Americans would sacrifice some income for more meaningful work. I really do actually think that most Americans can donate something, but if your point is that you think 5% of income is too high then then I’m willing to agree that maybe that isn’t right for everybody. Not to get to hung up on numbers, but I will concede that 5% is not “barely noticeable” for most people. But 1% probably is, and there are several “pledges” that use this instead.

I think it is more important to impress upon the affluent that they are not holding up their share and could be giving substantially more than they do than to give some blanket amount that even low-income folks should feel bad about not giving. Poor people are already doing more than rich people proportionally!

That was my purpose here, was to kind of break down the assumption of somebody who by their own commentary lives comfortably and simply doesn’t seem interested in charitable giving, using their employees as a dubious shield. If that came across as overzealous then I apologize to all. I went ahead and struck through some portions that upon further reflection I don’t feel good about standing behind.

At the same time, I would appreciate it if you (as in anybody reading) please do seriously consider signing the GWWC pledge.

Bart, is it true that you labeled some of your cookies as gluten-free when in fact they were not safe for celiacs to eat, then made a website specifically to impugn the character of the person who politely called you out on it?

https://glutendude.com/barts-bakery/

Your employees have nothing to do with it. I'm not suggesting you donate all of your money to a food bank and live in a hovel. I'm saying it's a basically decent thing to do to voluntary tithe a small but nonzero portion of your ongoing income. I think virtually anybody with any steady income is financially capable to pledge to donate 5-10%. Maybe I should take this to mean that you don't have income and/or are in debt. If so, I am sorry to hear that. However, if you have no income (or that income is otherwise not disposable), you don't have to donate anything and can still take the pledge!

Edit: I received some feedback that this is too harsh. I’m sorry, Mr. Greenhut, it’s not appropriate of me to go to so far into questioning your financial situation. I struck through some portions that are not fair/unambiguously true.

I'm interested in the idea that these bags are more sanitary than other dog bags. Your website mentions 'bacterial pass-through.' As far as I am aware, touching dog feces through a plastic bag does not put anybody risk of contact with bacteria passing through the plastic.

Can you substantiate the idea that bacteria can migrate through the plastic bag? If you say that your scoop "saves lives", surely you can provide statistics on how many people get sick and die from bacteria transmitted through a plastic bag?

Oh lol, this is actually worse than I thought. I thought you made the bag out of something that is *theoretically* degradable (e.g. in soil with water) but just doesn't degrade in practice. It sounds to me like you are calling this 99% biodegradable based solely on the cardboard, because the plastic is a negligible share of the weight.

Even then, I'm not sure how you get to 99%--the frame is metal, right? I would assume it is more than 1% of the weight of the product but maybe I'm wrong. How much does each component weigh, and how biodegradable is it?

if the bag itself is just some non-degradable plastic like PE, then yes I would say this is a very misleading, if technically true, claim. You could make an equally biodegradable product by just selling a regular plastic bag with the dog poop already in it! "Pre-filled!"

You know very well that this is not what people are looking for when they are looking for an environmentally friendly bag. That's as true in 1985 as it is today. Can you explain why you think this isn't deceptive?

If the claim was exactly accurate, then what did it mean specifically? Is it 99% by weight or by volume or what? Under what conditions do the bags degrade, and how long does it take?

GWWC is asking for 10% [a portion] of your personal income. It doesn’t impact your business costs. You can sign up to do recurring donations through Givewell in under 5 minutes. 10% is small enough that you won’t even notice it’s gone, probably. I don’t! If 10 is too much, why not 5%?

So what is the real blocker here, apart from that you don’t want to?

Edit: I received some feedback that this is too harsh. I’m sorry, Mr. Greenhut, it’s not appropriate of me to go to so far into questioning your financial situation. I struck through some portions that are not fair/unanbiguously true.

It is pretty clear from the discussion and your previous comments and sources I can find online that you did previously package the product with the claim “99% Bio-Degradable”. Can you explain exactly what that means?

So do you not know whether your own product was biodegradable? How much research did you do into this before you applied that marketing to your product?

The FTC guidelines I posted above originally came out in 1992. Lots of dog bag makers have been taken to task over this issue in the past. You definitely could have known. Whatever the merits to your grievances against that particular DA, you probably shouldn’t have used that marketing term in the first place, no? In a sense, you cost yourself by making claims that you could not support.

I’m drilling into this slightly because if you said “We were wrong to use that term, technically the bag can biodegrade but we didn’t think fully through what most people think that means in practice, so we removed the claim after the DA told us to.” That would make a lot of sense and be basically fine by me. But that would require acknowledging that you made a mistake, which you seem to be psychologically incapable of doing. This is a very troubling (but common) trait for a business leader!

Thanks!

Understood, thanks. Will you correct your Amazon store page, which suggests that a single package contains 105 calories? I notice several reviewers have been confused by this.

I’d like to trust you on that, but you understand that I can’t know that unless you go into some detail about specifically what conditions under which the bags biodegrade, and what you think happens to your poop bags after people throw them away.

My guess is that if people throw the bags away in the trash (as they must, since dog poop isn’t compostable), the bags will sit in a landfill for substantially longer than a year. Is that correct or incorrect?

I don’t know what to tell you. When evaluating whether I should buy or crowdfund your projects, I have to take into account the track record of your marketing of previous products. Do you believe your marketing was deceptive or not?

I noticed that your Amazon page says a 1.6 oz bag of Belgian Chocolate Chip Cookies is 105 calories, but evidently the bags say that there are actually two 105 calorie servings per bag. Can you clear up this ambiguity, given that you specifically market your cookies as healthier than alternatives?

There's never a bad time to start. Will you take the Giving What We Can pledge?

https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/pledge

Okay, but what do you mean by biodegradable? How long does it take to break down, and under what conditions? Do you mean that, per FTC guidelines, the bags (or 99% of them?) "will completely break down into its natural components within one year after customary disposal"?

But was the scoop biodegradable?

What is your definition of 'complete', in this context?