Green washing is a term that is used for a campaign to make consumers believe that a company and/or its products are enviormentaly friendly. It is also used to discribe the push to use certain products and or techniques to create a sense of security in the people that they are making their lives enviormentally friendly.
There for being green washed is a term describing people who have been fooled by these ad campaigns. One of my favorites is the people who put everything that can be recycled including all types of plastic, cardboard and metals into there recycling bin expecting that the local sanitation department seperates them out and recycles 100% of all items put into them. In truth most sanitation departments only recycle bottles, glass jars and bottles, corigated cardboard, tin cans and aluminum. All other plastic and cardboards are tossed into the landfill.
Many of the suggestions for living green include build houses with hardwood floors (they last longer and don't hardly need replaced, use press wood boards, or wall materials made out of pressed cardboard. These ideas seem logical as hardwood does last pretty much the whole life of the house, but consider the fact that most hardwood trees take a hundred years to mature to harvest age it doesn't seem so green. pressed board seeming logical as it is made from sawdust and glue, and is the use of a by product of sawmills. Consider the fact that the sawdust is coming from new wood products created from cutting the raw tree into lumber not recycled wood or discarded wood.
Well there is no argument against the pressed cardboard walling material right? Wrong, on the average the pressed cardboard wall material only contains 20% recycled cardboard the other 80% is newly manufactured cardboard.
It is difficult to be green when the government allows companies to advertise their products as made of recycled material as long as it contains 20% of recycled materials. So, in truth only products that boldly state that they are made of 100% recycled material are truely green.
In reguards to household chemical products they can be advertised as enviormentally safe if they have no imediate eviorment impact. There are products that are advertised as enviormentally safe that if they get into a water supply are poisonous.
Am I greenwashed? probably to some extent just becuase haven't discovered the flaw in logic to a green product I use.
I thing 'greenwashing' is something that happens to just about everyone at one point or another. Kind of like the "fluffy" phase of paganism, where everything is so new that the enthusiasm rolls right over your good sense, it seems.
ReplyDeleteThankfully there does seem to come a point where you realize that 'green' is just a marketing ploy and that some of the things you used to do weren't really all that bad. So as far as I'm concerned, do what you can and let Mother Nature sort out the rest. She's been handling this world far longer than any of us and we haven't managed to kill her yet.