A Global Unit of ‘Green’
Over at gadget site Gizmodo they are discussing a blog post by Ken Musgrave called “Why We Need a Globally-Recognized Unit of “Green”“, responding that “We May Need A Global Unit Of ‘Green’, But It Won’t Be Easy Or Clear”
Musgrave argues:
The designer had chosen bamboo to provide a suitable look while enhancing sustainability compared to competing products. Bamboo takes a stain very well so it has a beautiful finish–important for a living space–and it is strong as well as fast-growing, so it can replace slow-growing woods, earning its excellent sustainable reputation. It’s a favorite for floors, wall-coverings and clothes, but, so far, rare in electronics. Rather than applaud this material choice, however, the designers questioned it as greenwashing. They said its prevalence in both sustainable products and products pretending to be sustainable cost it credibility. In fact, they went so far as to say bamboo is a material whose time has come and gone and that it should now be avoided.
What a dilemma for designers! Choose a material that grows like grass but risk alienating confused consumers, or choose another that grows like timber but risk alienating the well-informed consumers. One choice is certainly a missed opportunity to make an environmental difference, but earning a reputation for greenwashing could have negative implications for a company doing the right thing.
He concludes, arguing strongly;
While many want to make purchasing choices that support sustainable lifestyles, they are rarely equipped to do so. Our society needs a universal standard for measuring and comparing “greenness.” We have food labels showing calories, fat grams, and protein grams as units of measure that help us make informed decisions around our nutrition. We need similar, well-structured and credible sources to help us make informed decisions around carbon impact, recyclability, and other critical factors of sustainability.
Imagine a consumer at Target choosing between the disposable bamboo plates and disposable plastic plates and checking a label with the green score to help with the choice. We can even call the labels something catchy–like “Greenies.” “Hey!” A suddenly triumphant husband calls to his wife. “These bamboo plates are only 3 Greenies–those plastic plates are 5!”
Gizmodo, playing negative-Nancy here, respond to this idea in a way that shows they really didn’t think their answer through.
How are we going to measure greenness? How much of the original product is used in the new, recycled product? How much energy in joules it takes to make this? How many pounds of carbon is spent? Many of these are nebulous numbers, and it takes a combination of them to determine whether or not one thing is “greener” than another. Something may be using 99% of its original materials but take a lot of energy to recycle, whereas something may be using very little original material but be quickly grown from the earth.
If we just look at a measure of carbon neutrality for now, greenhouse gasses being, in essence, the mother of all environmental problems, performing a compete life-cycle analysis of a product is not really that hard and The Carbon Trust in the UK have been proposing just that sort of concept for years. Recently they have expanded that concept into Australia via the Carbon Reduction label” project in partnership with Planet Ark.
My own company, Carbon Planet, has done plenty of LCA work so we can testify that it’s quite ‘do-able’ (horrid expression). Additionally there is plenty of software, specific to various industry types, to simplify the task a bit. How boundary conditions are worked out, and supply chain factors taken into account is complex but well documented and based largely on common sense sprinkled with precedent.
That said, I’ll admit that how carbon labelling takes into account issues of transport, is still not clear to me. For example a bottle of wine, produced on-site and sold at the cellar door should have fewer emissions associated with it than the same bottle of wine bought in a supermarket on the other side of the country. There needs to be a concept of wholesale and retail carbon labelling perhaps, where the final label, much like price tags in a local supermarket, are applied locally based on an agreed formula. But I guess the Carbon Trust are thinking about these issues and how best to address them. To date the whole concept of carbon labelling in the UK has been more hype than reality, with plenty of concepts being announced but precious little on-the-shelf action. The last time I was in the UK I looked carefully for the carbon labelling in my local Tesco store but found nothing.
It’s a concept that once worked out properly can be applied to all manufactured goods though, so it will, in time, be accepted and simply incorporated into the one label people really care about, the price. Perhaps the global symbol of ‘green’ will simply end up being the €. — DS