2008 Woodie Awards
Too Much Glitz, Not Enough Green
Riley Hooper
Issue date: 3/18/08 Section: Viewpoints
Have you heard? Green is totally the new black. Today's celebrities have gone eco-chic. According to ecorazzi.com, the latest on green gossip, Cameron Diaz doesn't leave home without her Envirosax reusable shopping bags (which, by the way, come in a "colorful, retro-hip menagerie"), television star Hayden Panettiere wears $285 dresses made from bamboo eco-fabric, and Guster frontman, Adam Gardner, uses eco-friendly toilet bowl cleaner.
This "green" trend is catching on. Now, even a "regular" person can be seen driving a Prius, shopping at organic health food stores, and buying earth-friendly products.
While some are glad to see celebrities using their power for good, all I see is pure evil. Sure, our society is more conscious about the environment, and that's great-but this so-called "green" movement is the wrong way to go about fixing the mess we've made of this world.
If over-exploitation of the world's natural resources and mass consumption is the problem, then how can we expect to use exploitation and consumption to fix it? Of course, as humans, it is impossible not to exploit and consume the earth's resources, but the solution is in restraint of these actions, not in finding better ways to do them. Nowhere in hemp designer jeans and carbon neutral airplane flights do I see restraint. All I see is a continuation-perpetuation, even-of the same consumerist culture that got us into this mess. The green movement allows for us as consumers to be lazy, continuing to live our lives of excess, except this time with biodegradable packaging and a steeper price tag. It comes down to the fact that humans are more interested in themselves than nature-concern for the environment comes secondary to pursuing a lifestyle or making a profit.
It seems that most often, customers are only willing to forfeit their money-not their consumption habits-to save the environment. An ethnographic research firm recently participated in a study that looked at consumers' motivations behind "going green." The firm's founder, David Lubensky, summarizes the study's results: "We see a trend toward 'self-centered consciousness,' whereby consumers want companies to meet their personal needs and positively impact society." Results from their survey taken in 2007 of 2,007 adults in the United States found that the majority cited the most important product attributes are those that affect them personally such as quality (93%) and price (89%), as opposed to attributes that help the environment such as being grown locally (69%). A study conducted by GfK Roper Consulting found similar results. While 40% of consumers they interviewed "say they are willing to pay for a product that is perceived as being better for the environment… most say they are too expensive (74%) and don't work as well (61%)" (Schaefer). An article on green marketing strategy in MIT's Journal of Management Resources and Ideas concurs: "When consumers are forced to make trade-offs between product attributes or helping the environment, the environment almost never wins."
It seems that, like their customers, producers of these products are only willing to give up so much for the environment as well. While a company may create a product with environmental concerns in mind, their ultimate goal-just as the ultimate goal of any business-is to make a profit. . As the surveys cited above demonstrate, many people are not willing to buy green products because, due to their use of more expensive materials and production processes, they are often more expensive and less effective than mainstream brands. So while appealing to the customer's concern for the environment, the producers of green products must also cater to the consumer's cost and efficacy needs. Therefore environmentally friendly aspects of green products may lose footing to the conflicting interests of efficacy and price.
Studies have shown that often, "green" and "eco-friendly" products don't live up to their claims. For example, a recent study conducted by the environmental marketing firm TerraChoice found that, of the 1,018 "green" products they tested, all but one were committing what TerraChoice has called the "Six Sins of Greenwashing." The number one sin, and the sin most often committed, was the sin of hidden tradeoff. This sin is committed by marketing a product as "green" based on a single environmental attribute, while ignoring other non-green aspects of the product, or other environmental issues, such as energy, global warming, water, and forestry impact. TerraChoice's Scot Case gave the example of companies that market products with recycled content. He questioned whether there was pollution during the manufacturing phase, or if all the aspects of the product are environmentally friendly.
The subsequent five sins are committed when a product makes an environmental claim that: cannot be proved, is vague, irrelevant, contradictory, or downright false. Nevertheless, thousands of supposedly "green" products are on the shelves, making misleading claims because there are no set standards or definitions for such terms as "eco-friendly" or "natural."
Thus we see that even in our attempts to help the ecological crisis we continue to exploit the earth's natural resources in excess for our own benefit. The common trend is to believe that humans can solve the ecological crisis with developing science and technologies. This has the potential to do more harm than good. Both the world's natural resources and human intellect are finite. If we keep exploiting the Earth, one day its resources will run out. According to the World Wildlife Foundation's (WWF) "Living Planet Report 2006," we are currently using the earth's natural resources at a pace we cannot sustain: "Our footprint now exceeds the world's ability to regenerate by about 25 per cent." WWF concludes that if we keep living the way we are now, by the year 2050, humanity will need two Earths to sustain its demand of resources. It is also important to note that if we keep depending on our own abilities to fix this problem, we must be aware that they can and will backfire on us-wasn't it the human invention of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) that caused the current hole in the ozone layer?
Historic wildlife conservationist Aldo Leopold once wrote, "In human history, we have learned (I hope) that the conqueror role is eventually self-defeating." Of course humans must exploit the Earth to an extent to live-but what we're seeing today in America is mass exploitation for human benefit, not human need. Helping the environment is not buying five pairs of hemp designer jeans-it's deciding that the one pair of regular jeans you already own will suffice your needs.
Want to know how you can actually help the environment? Be on the lookout for our summer "green" issue, where we'll discuss these issues further and offer tons of tips on how we change our overconsumption habits. If you have any opinions or pointers on the world "going green," send a Letter to the Editor.
 Media Credit: Ciarra Schmidt |
This "green" trend is catching on. Now, even a "regular" person can be seen driving a Prius, shopping at organic health food stores, and buying earth-friendly products.
While some are glad to see celebrities using their power for good, all I see is pure evil. Sure, our society is more conscious about the environment, and that's great-but this so-called "green" movement is the wrong way to go about fixing the mess we've made of this world.
If over-exploitation of the world's natural resources and mass consumption is the problem, then how can we expect to use exploitation and consumption to fix it? Of course, as humans, it is impossible not to exploit and consume the earth's resources, but the solution is in restraint of these actions, not in finding better ways to do them. Nowhere in hemp designer jeans and carbon neutral airplane flights do I see restraint. All I see is a continuation-perpetuation, even-of the same consumerist culture that got us into this mess. The green movement allows for us as consumers to be lazy, continuing to live our lives of excess, except this time with biodegradable packaging and a steeper price tag. It comes down to the fact that humans are more interested in themselves than nature-concern for the environment comes secondary to pursuing a lifestyle or making a profit.
It seems that most often, customers are only willing to forfeit their money-not their consumption habits-to save the environment. An ethnographic research firm recently participated in a study that looked at consumers' motivations behind "going green." The firm's founder, David Lubensky, summarizes the study's results: "We see a trend toward 'self-centered consciousness,' whereby consumers want companies to meet their personal needs and positively impact society." Results from their survey taken in 2007 of 2,007 adults in the United States found that the majority cited the most important product attributes are those that affect them personally such as quality (93%) and price (89%), as opposed to attributes that help the environment such as being grown locally (69%). A study conducted by GfK Roper Consulting found similar results. While 40% of consumers they interviewed "say they are willing to pay for a product that is perceived as being better for the environment… most say they are too expensive (74%) and don't work as well (61%)" (Schaefer). An article on green marketing strategy in MIT's Journal of Management Resources and Ideas concurs: "When consumers are forced to make trade-offs between product attributes or helping the environment, the environment almost never wins."
It seems that, like their customers, producers of these products are only willing to give up so much for the environment as well. While a company may create a product with environmental concerns in mind, their ultimate goal-just as the ultimate goal of any business-is to make a profit. . As the surveys cited above demonstrate, many people are not willing to buy green products because, due to their use of more expensive materials and production processes, they are often more expensive and less effective than mainstream brands. So while appealing to the customer's concern for the environment, the producers of green products must also cater to the consumer's cost and efficacy needs. Therefore environmentally friendly aspects of green products may lose footing to the conflicting interests of efficacy and price.
Studies have shown that often, "green" and "eco-friendly" products don't live up to their claims. For example, a recent study conducted by the environmental marketing firm TerraChoice found that, of the 1,018 "green" products they tested, all but one were committing what TerraChoice has called the "Six Sins of Greenwashing." The number one sin, and the sin most often committed, was the sin of hidden tradeoff. This sin is committed by marketing a product as "green" based on a single environmental attribute, while ignoring other non-green aspects of the product, or other environmental issues, such as energy, global warming, water, and forestry impact. TerraChoice's Scot Case gave the example of companies that market products with recycled content. He questioned whether there was pollution during the manufacturing phase, or if all the aspects of the product are environmentally friendly.
The subsequent five sins are committed when a product makes an environmental claim that: cannot be proved, is vague, irrelevant, contradictory, or downright false. Nevertheless, thousands of supposedly "green" products are on the shelves, making misleading claims because there are no set standards or definitions for such terms as "eco-friendly" or "natural."
Thus we see that even in our attempts to help the ecological crisis we continue to exploit the earth's natural resources in excess for our own benefit. The common trend is to believe that humans can solve the ecological crisis with developing science and technologies. This has the potential to do more harm than good. Both the world's natural resources and human intellect are finite. If we keep exploiting the Earth, one day its resources will run out. According to the World Wildlife Foundation's (WWF) "Living Planet Report 2006," we are currently using the earth's natural resources at a pace we cannot sustain: "Our footprint now exceeds the world's ability to regenerate by about 25 per cent." WWF concludes that if we keep living the way we are now, by the year 2050, humanity will need two Earths to sustain its demand of resources. It is also important to note that if we keep depending on our own abilities to fix this problem, we must be aware that they can and will backfire on us-wasn't it the human invention of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) that caused the current hole in the ozone layer?
Historic wildlife conservationist Aldo Leopold once wrote, "In human history, we have learned (I hope) that the conqueror role is eventually self-defeating." Of course humans must exploit the Earth to an extent to live-but what we're seeing today in America is mass exploitation for human benefit, not human need. Helping the environment is not buying five pairs of hemp designer jeans-it's deciding that the one pair of regular jeans you already own will suffice your needs.
Want to know how you can actually help the environment? Be on the lookout for our summer "green" issue, where we'll discuss these issues further and offer tons of tips on how we change our overconsumption habits. If you have any opinions or pointers on the world "going green," send a Letter to the Editor.
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