How to Make Green: Just Mix Blue and Yellow, Right?
Last month I attended an exhibition called Feedback (held by the Green Drinks organization) which showcased 19 works on sustainability by artists, designers, architects and engineers in Manhattan. The basketball-court sized gallery space in the hip Meatpacking district turned into just another venue filled with neatly dressed professionals, looking for something other than what their usual weeknights had to offer. Having arrived with a friend who was fasting and having paid $20 at the door for drinks she was unable to enjoy, I and two other friends loomed around the exhibition feeling guilty.
In spite of this, I couldn’t help but notice that the exhibition itself was patchy and seemed to lack a cohesive message. What’s going to happen to that fake lawn carpet that could have cover an entire block?, I wondered, Is that going to end up in a landfill after a one-time use?
This event characterized several aspects of the U.S. market’s ‘green’ trend, which has caught my attention in recent years; as word ‘green’ becomes ubiquitous it is also becoming a cultural fad, often serving as a marketing tool in order to sell even more goods (i.e. the props at the party) and without any clear understanding of what really makes a product environmentally friendly (i.e. the patchy message) versus just painted green (i.e. the lawn carpet).
So I really think there is an opportunity to spread a clear understanding of what “green living” truly means and what determines a product to be environmentally friendly. Firstly, let’s consider how “green” managed to become merely a marketing statement, used to boost corporate imagery and make consumers feel good about their purchases, rather than a truly meaningful concept. Here are two examples: home textiles like sheets made of bamboo are sold as eco-friendly products because bamboo is one of the fastest growing plants. This is true but the process used to make bamboo into this fiber generates hazardous industrial waste. And “green” furniture merchants who sell tree trunks from rainforests, state that they are “reclaimed wood” but who actually verifies that? Is using wood and contributing to deforestation, actually greener than using a material like iron, which is perfectly biodegradable as well? I can list many more examples that make me wonder whether the marketing messages around us are sending the wrong message, which is to buy more products that claim to be environmentally friendly or to not to buy at all.
If we ask what would be the best for planet earth?, unfortunately the ultimate answer would be “for human beings to stop existing altogether”, as put by Derek Denckla (a sustainable real estate developer of the Propeller Group) at the Green Home Design Apartment Therapy Meet-up in March. But it is not our option to do that (thank goodness!). Therefore we have to come up with ways of modifying the way we live; so if Derek’s clients want to build a second house, he cannot stop them altogether, no, but he can help them to build an environmentally friendly one, which makes more sense.
Over in Japan (where I’m from) 50% of solid wastes are recycled, compared with about 30% in the U.S. Only 16% of waste in Japan ends up in landfills, versus 60-70% in the U.S. I strongly believe that as manufacturers benefit by profiting and consumers benefit by using, both parties are ultimately responsible for what happens once a product has completed its cycle. The Japan Environment Ministry mandates that a certain amount of home electronic products be recycled (50% of washing machines for instance) and that all commercial computers are taken back for recycling, at the manufacturers’ cost.
Another way that Japan improves its environment is by using EM or Effective Microorganism, a liquid composition of live bacteria which fertilizes soil and cleans water and is actually used in 190 countries around the world. In Shikoku Island EM was distributed to households to use for washing rice. As a result it cleaned the water system and eventually Setonai-kai bay - and after a few years, fishermen saw a rise in their catch of fish and clams returned to the beaches. Now this, in my opinion, is real green living. Imagine if the state of New York tried to distribute EM to New Yorkers – they would probably end up being sued for possibly endangering children with this weird black liquid (though EM is also a drinkable antioxidant too, by the way)! So we’re stuck with recycling/reusing and reducing garbage and there is no EM to wash our rice with - what else can we do?
Having lived here in the U.S. for over 10 years, most of which has been spent designing consumer products, I have actually come to believe that a way to live green is to use products which are environmentally friendly in a real way. The ideal way of being green is to reduce or not buy anything but hey, let’s get real; we still need detergent and to replace our ragged bath towels. And I still want the newest Macbook… But how do we distinguish the products merely painted green, from the ones that really are?
For this, I recommend looking at the world of architecture, where the answer is simpler and easier. The U.S. Green Building Council has a certification system called LEED which clearly rates new and existing buildings against various environmental issues, including energy/water conservation and reduction in the amount of waste sent to landfills, etc. I believe a similar rating system should be implemented for all consumer products as well. Take a look at law labels on garments, where it is mandatory to state the manufacturers. I think it is high time for the U.S. government to step in and bring the same degree of clarity for the product’s environmental friendliness to all categories.
While this idea is still just a hope, there are other ways we can truly go green now. At Going Green: Truth Vs. Myths at Brooklyn Designs this month, the speakers suggested that we look at companies’ websites to learn more about the products and philosophy of the manufacturer. They also suggested that we make changes around our work environments to reduce waste, use greener products and recycle more and more information on the how of it can be found at Treehugger.
There is a long way to go in terms of educating consumers, manufacturers and the government and spreading the understanding that all parties who enjoy the benefits of consumer products are responsible for their waste - but at the end of the day, some greenery is still better than nothing. Exhibitions like Feedback continue to dispatch valuable information on the issue and even Wal-Mart has “green” stores with reduced energy consumption for a few years now. My beloved iBook can even be taken back to Apple for free recycling and environmentally friendly disposal. So the big picture is forming – and I aim to help paint it, but in the right way.
