This weekend the New York Times published an article called Buying into the Green Movement, which takes a critical look at both people who think that being environmentally friendly is just about buying slightly different stuff, and companies that want to pitch their products as eco friendly, regardless of whether or not it’s really accurate or not.
Consumers have embraced living green, and for the most part the mainstream green movement has embraced green consumerism. But even at this moment of high visibility and impact for environmental activists, a splinter wing of the movement has begun to critique what it sometimes calls “light greens.”
Critics question the notion that we can avert global warming by buying so-called earth-friendly products, from clothing and cars to homes and vacations, when the cumulative effect of our consumption remains enormous and hazardous.
As someone who sells environmentally friendly products, you can probably imagine my opinion on the subject.
From my perspective, if you are otherwise going to throw away all your kitchen scraps and lawn and garden clippings so that they go into a landfill and never biodegrade, is it really so bad to buy a compost bin so that you can improve your soil instead?
If you have a lawn and have to keep the grass cut, isn’t it better to buy and use a manual reel mower than a gas powered lawnmower that puts out as much air pollution as 11 cars for every hour that you run it?
Sure, we could encourage you to become Freegans who go from dumpster to dumpster to get everything you need so that you don’t have to buy anything from a store. But is that realistic for most people?
On a personal level, I certainly agree that we could all consume a lot less, buy less, generate less trash, burn less gasoline, and use less electricity. In fact, I would highly encourage anyone reading this to take some steps along these lines. We try to do things like this at work here.
We have gone carbon neutral as a company, we carpool to work and ride our bikes, we chose an electricity provider that uses 100 renewable energy sources, and we are renovating our building to make it as environmentally friendly as possible. We have collected and matched donations to plant more than 17,000 trees through the Arbor Day Foundation and Trees for the Future.
Are we perfect? Of course not. Could we do more? Sure. But at least we’re doing something.
I believe we’re a much bigger part of the solution than we are a part of the problem, and I am proud of what we do here.
Treehugger.com has its own take on the article, which is also worth reading.
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