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The Greenwash Brigade

Is Delta really "Flying Greener?"

I recently got back from an international vacation. I don’t usually read in-flight magazines, but I spied a headline while my neighbor perused his that made me pick mine up. Evidently, according to CEO Richard Anderson’s editorial, Delta is “Flying Greener,” (in the January magazine.)

He highlights their efforts to be more energy efficient — laudable, but mostly profit-driven as fuel is a significant and volatile portion of airlines’ costs. My favorite misleading sentence reads,

“On average, our fleet performs at 55 passenger-miles per gallon, better than a hybrid car transporting one person.”

This may be true, but I wouldn’t drive the 4,936 miles (as calculated by TerraPass) round trip to San Jose, Costa Rica for a 10-day vacation — which is what I did with Delta’s assistance. Flying facilitates travel miles people would NEVER consider in a car. The airplane/hybrid comparison is a red herring.

Delta also shared that their emission reduction since 2000 is the equivalent of 19.5 million cars from our roads (who came up with that measure, anyway?). How much of that is reduced demand in the bad economy?

He concluded by identifying external bogeymen that prevent them from further reducing the environmental impacts of flying — the specter of emissions taxes, and the more justifiable outdated Air Traffic Control technology which he says requires inefficient traffic patterns.

Emissions taxes — which would be passed on to consumers — hold out the hope that increased costs of flying might encourage consumers to fly less frequently. And, I’m not an expert, but I can believe that updated Air Traffic Control could also produce improvements.

Flying is hard to give up — and anything that defies the laws of gravity is never going to be “green.” In the end, the most it can hope for is “less bad.”

I am the Lorax and I speak for the...coal?

Unbelievable. Dr. Seuss must be rolling in his grave. Three businessmen have hijacked the name of the Dr. Seuss environmentalist classic, “The Lorax” to greenwash a planned coal gasification and chemical plant: I bring you LoraxAg, “architects of clean technologies.”

It’s two-for-one: I’m offended both as an environmentalist and as an architect.

I am the Lorax and I speak for the… well, for the high sulfur coal…and synthetic fertilizer?

The company brochure (PDF) reads like a Twilight Zone version of the Dr. Seuss classic. Amid warm and fuzzy pictures of hands planting a seedling (and rail cars presumably full of ‘clean’ coal), the brochure boasts that the chemical plant will produce “ammonia, urea, and sulfuric acid” with “inexpensive high sulfur coal reserves” bringing “high paying, high skill jobs.”

Yeah, that definitely reminds me of the Lorax: The part about chopping down Truffula Trees and emitting Gloppity Glop and Schloppity Schlop in order to provide jobs for the Once-ler family. Guys, you’re not the Lorax. You’re Once-lers! ‘Once-ler-Ag’ would be a more fitting moniker, ‘architects of greenwash’

It’s barely February, and we already have a contender for greenwash of the year.

Mini Me Mini Green Vaio

W2_Green_with_case_EN_540x405.jpgSony recently released its spiffy new W mini series Vaio notebook which has a green keypad frame. I know. You would be reasonable to assume a green product — literally green — cannot be sustainably green. Well, in this case you would be pleasantly surprised to be wrong. (Photo via Sony)

The 2010 Consumer Electronic Show showcased hundreds of new products, all part of the worldwide crisis in e-waste that is hitting children and adults in developing countries hard with toxic trash’s health and pollution legacy. Many constituent parts of computers, when incinerated or otherwise handled at the end of their life, can turn into substances clearly linked with immune and reproductive disorders, birth defects, neurological damage and cancer.

Against this backdrop described by the Basel Action Network and Silicon Valley Toxic Coalition in Exporting Harm, there are some positive developments in the design and manufacture of emerging electronics. Sony was an early leader in sustainable practices and recently elected to remove chlorine and bromine from computers as outlined in a recent report (PDF) by ChemSec (the International Chemical Secretariat) and Clean Production Action.

The W series Mini Vaio has some playful packaging features, such as a plastic enclosure made from 23% recycled CDs (must have been very bad music to not have even made the resale market!) and a carrying case from plastic bottles. It is lit with energy-sipping LEDs, and apparently reduces CO2 emissions by 10% (based on the innovative use of existing plastic products in its packaging and casing).

What was much more telling to me is the fact that it’s registered with EPEAT in addition to Energy Star 5.0 and RoHS (the European bad boy list of Restricted Hazardous Substances which includes lead, cadmium, and mercury among others). EPEAT is an acronym for Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool, and it makes Energy Star ® look like a coloring exercise. The standards contain 51 robust criteria and are light-years beyond merely energy considerations. Witnesseth: materials (heavy metals, plastics), design for end of life (to facilitate disassembly for future gadgets or other products), product longevity, energy, end of life management (the 800 lb gorilla), corporate performance (remember the product vs. whole company analysis?) and packaging are all considered in the registration process.

The US Electronics Industry has made great strides in product development but many companies are persistently stonewalling attempts to develop a US policy to develop a cogent end-of-life system called product stewardship. There are some companies that have take-back programs but the US infrastructure is still woefully inadequate to address what will only continue to be an international travesty and embarrassment. The world disposes (read that as “throws out”) 50 million tons of e-waste each year. Here is an incredible, missed opportunity to create hundreds of thousands of jobs across the US to develop a safe, responsible infrastructure to handle e-waste.

The EPA has a great site with information on e-waste management issues. In the meantime, support Sony’s and other efforts to refine and upgrade sustainable product design and help create positive pressure to address e-waste, one click, snap at a time.

My annual offset disappointment

In the last week of the year, I have a ritual of calculating my carbon footprint and buying offsets.

I’m aware of all the arguments that offsets are an excuse for bad behavior. For me, this is an intentional choice.

First, I make ongoing efforts to reduce my footprint every day. (This year my biggest improvement was weatherizing my four-unit apartment building-home. I continued to commute and run errands by bike and remained a vegetarian locavore.)

Second, I hope that sooner than later there will be a robust cap-and-trade market in the US. I’m spending my money in support of a growing industry. I hope they will be able to handle the coming explosion in demand for their services.

Third, I’m investing in something I believe in.

Back to today’s writing motivator. Last year, Heidi and I weighed in on offsetting, and I used this Clean Air-Cool Planet guide to carbon offsets (opens PDF). It still helps me figure out where to get “quality” offsets.

There’s an organization, SELF (Solar Electric Light Fund), that I think is absolutely wonderful. I would love to buy offsets from them, and in 2008, in an uneducated state, I did.

Last year, I asked SELF if they would take steps to become a higher quality provider of offsets, based on the principles in that report. This year, in wishing yet again that I could feel good about buying offsets from SELF, I discovered that the quality of their offsets is now more transparently somewhere around the status of lame. They sell carbon offsets, but in describing them and how they work, they make up a new category of product called “soft” offsets. They don’t even promise that they won’t sell the same offsets twice, or that there’s a correlation between the number of offset tons they say they are selling you and the reduction of CO2.

Huff. It makes me sad every year. I wish great non-profits wouldn’t greenwash, just like I wish huge corporations wouldn’t greenwash.

So, again this year, I sadly go to one of the three “top performers” from the Clean Air-Cool Planet report: Climate Trust, NativeEnergy, or Sustainable Travel/MyClimate.

Hope in the midst of global greenwash

I love Jim’s items, but I’ve been advocating for a gift-free family Christmas for years because I dislike obligatory (and all) shopping and never see those ads. This year, I got the “draw names” plan adopted, and my gun-loving brother-in-law (who doesn’t read this blog) is getting a donation to the Minnesota DNR’s firearm safety program.

I still have two highlights - a planetary greenwash champion, and a hopeful greenwash-buster.

First, for all the hype about good work on climate change, claims of progress are hooey. Leading scientists now say we need to limit CO2 to 350ppm to avoid the worst effects - and we’ve already passed it. So, let’s look at the efforts.

  • China is promising to reduce its energy intensity. That’s a fancy way of saying they’ll produce more stuff per unit of energy, but their total emissions will still rise as their economy grows.
  • India is on the same page as China.
  • The US pledged a reduction of around 17% by 2030, but that is only a 6% decrease from the 1990 levels where European set their 20% reduction benchmark.
  • The US implemented Cash for Clunkers, a program set to sell cars rather than reduce emissions.
  • The weatherization funding through the stimulus bill is hopeful… but is only just getting going, and needs to be sustained.
  • Still lacking a global carbon market, offsets are (appropriately) taking more heat for justifying bad climate behavior.
  • And, surprise surprise, the biggest savior of the climate is the economic collapse (opens PDF).

2009’s best greenwash-busting source is mobile GoodGuide access. Some very smart people (the first one a Professor at the University of California-Berkeley) have done detailed research to “provide the world’s largest and most reliable source of information on the health, environmental, and social impacts of the products in your home.” Better yet, they’ve made it accessible while shopping with a mobile phone. iphone_browse_medium.jpg

  • If you have an iPhone, their app give you instant information by scanning the bar code.
  • If not, you can text for information on categories of products or for a specific product.

My vote? Send the GoodGuide folks to the next climate change talks.

Bah Humbug to green(washed) Christmas gifts

As we take stock of the state of greenwash this holiday season, I thought it would be interesting to look at gift giving. We’re bombarded daily with superfluous products which have somehow been recast as ‘green’. Isn’t a “green gadget” an oxymoron? And during the holidays, useless but green “makes a great gift!” I thought I would close out the year by sharing some of my most egregious green(wash) gift favorites:

  • Bamboo iPhone Case - You don’t really need a wood box for your iPhone, so how about a ‘true bamboo’ green box for your iPhone?
  • tdg-yanko-solar-powered-glasses.jpgSolar-Powered Sunglasses - This way, when you lose your sunglasses you’re losing a solar power plant, too.
  • Fuel Cell Phone Charger - Talk about using a chainsaw to cut butter: how about a $275 fuel cell to charge your cell phone? Each $30 disposable cartridge of methanol provides enough juice for 6 charges. It would be greener to recharge your phone with an idling Hummer’s cigarette lighter.
  • insect theatre.jpegSolar Insect Theatre - A lighted wood box to attract bugs? You could put it next to your porch light to provide a diversity of habitats. That seems kind of silly and wasteful. Oh, wait, it’s made with FSC-certified wood and the light is solar powered. How green.
  • Organic Batter Blaster - Like fluffy organic pancakes but hate to stir ingredients? Then this pancake-in-a-disposable-can is for you. It’s ORGANIC!
  • Solar-Powered Grass - Hey, isn’t all grass solar powered? No, THIS grass glows in the dark via energy-efficient LED’s. Man, that’s double green!

Among our consumer habits, gift giving tends to be both more public and more aspirational: we’re making purchases for someone else. Deloitte’s 2009 Annual Holiday Survey (opens PDF) found that 47% of consumers would pay more for a “green” gift:

Deloitte chart.jpgMost telling was the fact that the younger the demographic, the higher the percentage, suggesting continued growth in the value placed on green. Manufacturers will seek to meet that demand through a combination of action (green manufacturing) and marketing (greenwash), so the forecast for 2010 looks like continued growth in greenwashing.

Bah Humbug.

Heidi's favorite greenwashes of 2009

Have a dollop of clean coal with your bottled water and compostable cups!

2009 was a big year for greenwashing, as green-related advertising just kept on coming. I would like to assume that much of it was well intended and part of the rising trajectory of sustainability programs. Other expressions are simply laughable, testing our ability to be skeptical and use those analytical skills you’s think would’ve been nicely honed by the Year of Greed.

arrowhead.jpgBottled water: Arrowhead Water’s Born Better campaign gets my first vote. 30% less plastic used in its bottles: yet another example of an incremental improvement in a product that, quite plainly, should be jettisoned into oblivion:

  • $100 billion spent on bottled water in the US each year
  • Its 1,900 times the price of tap water
  • 17 million barrels of oil used to make the plastic bottles (that could have fueled 100,000 cars for a year)
  • 86% thrown out as BFF of your local landfill
  • Confirmed by the General Accounting Office (opens PDF) to be subject to less stringent requirements than municipal drinking water

Clean coal: Yes, we will sadly be dating coal for quite some time until we fully fund investments in clean, longer term energy sources, but the clean coal campaign is the ultimate oxymoron. Check out the industry-funded report which gladly explains why Americans are so zesty about clean coal technologies that don’t exist yet operationally. American Council for Clean Coal Electricity is also the front group behind the Bonner & Associates scandal where fake letters were sent to Congress to defeat then-pending climate legislation. Bad product, bad companies. For an alternative to Stephen Colbert’s “truthiness” of clean coal, see the Coen Brother’s film and get the last laugh, or cough.

Corn-based containers that wouldn’t know a compost facility if it smacked them in the…: Too many well-intentioned environmental meetings or breezy outings to a Whole Foods store this year were marked by the use of a product that is decently preferable to the benzene-laced, marine life food called Styrofoam. NatureWorks ® products are in fact compostable. Compost is good. (Just ask Martha.)

However, they are compostable only in a fairly specific set of conditions—at a sustained temperature of 140 degrees Fahrenheit using digestive microbes in carefully controlled commercial compost facilities— in the mere 131 facilities scattered across the U.S. They do not biodegrade in compost in backyard composting, do not biodegrade quickly in landfill conditions and are probably tossed as garbage in most instances.

The manufacturer and distributors are honest— they make no bones about the fact that it will take 100-1,000 years to decompose in landfill conditions. It is the meeting organizers, food co-ops, the environmental agencies and natural resource groups that need to become savvy regarding the limitations of PLA-based cups (engineered corn, subsidized corn, high carbon intensity corn, compost conditions are not landfill conditions), and embrace the ceramic mug which has 2,000 uses and still wins (opens PDF) in a classic life cycle assessment.

Wrapping up 2009 in greenwash

It’s been a little while since the Greenwash Brigade has piped up, but never fear, dear readers — we’re not going anywhere. Throughout the week, Greenwash Brigade bloggers will be posting year-end reflections on greenwashing in the marketplace in 2009. First up will be Heidi, posting a little later this afternoon. Later on this week you’ll hear from Jim and Janne.

And in January, we’ll have some surprise guest bloggers on to share their thoughts on the evolving story of greenwashing.

Thank you for your readership! And of course, if you have suggestions for what you’d like to read about on the blog, or who you’d like to read guest posts from, don’t hesitate to drop us a line here.

And just in case you haven’t caught it, be sure to check out Marketplace’s Climate Race series and COP15 coverage.

Responsible investing for newbies -- share your ideas

I’ve been invited to do a short presentation to an investing club on “sustainable stuff and investing.” My plan is to define socially responsible investing, then to move on to Corporate Sustainability Reporting and to demonstrate it by reviewing reports for one or two of the companies they already invest in.

A while ago, the Brigadiers discussed corporate sustainability and I had my first and very frustrating foray into trying to find the reports for Seventh Generation. (Update - as predicted, I haven’t tried it since then.) We identified a host of websites and resources that I found overwhelming to navigate.

I’m asking my fellow Brigadiers and all our readers: If you had 15-20 minutes to share the two best, most accessible resources, what would you pick? URLs, comics, and memorable phrases — I’m open to anything!

Can you tell the difference between sustainable lumber and clear cut lumber?

hardwoods_numstead.jpg (numstead, via Flickr)

I didn’t think so.

A coalition of international environmental groups established the “Forest Stewardship Council” (FSC) in 1993 to help you tell the difference. Even though they’re criticized as not tough enough, the FSC’s third-party certification system has become the gold standard for sustainable forest products.

Following the old adage, “if you can’t beat them, join them,” the American Forest & Paper Association created its own certification system for labeling sustainably managed forests, requiring all members to ‘self-certify’ that they comply with their “Sustainable Forestry Initiative” (SFI) requirements. (SFI became an independent non-profit in 2007.) Buoyed by the support of behemoth members such as Weyerhaeuser the SFI has grown rapidly, with SFI operations now covering approximately 90% of the industrial forestland in the US.

Michael Brune, executive director of the Rainforest Action Network described the SFI efforts as “a new green coat of paint over the same tired practices” and environmental groups have lined up to fight the SFI certification program producing a sobering photo gallery of SFI Certified Logging.

The battle is heating up. The U.S. Green Building Council is now poised to recognize SFI certification in their LEED Rating System. Earlier this month, ForestEthics filed administrative complaints with the Federal Trade Commission and the IRS claiming that SFI’s “phony ‘green’ certification label misleads consumers and cheats taxpayers.” A certification system birthed by the industry it purports to regulate seems a bit like the fox guarding the henhouse.

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Meet the Greenwash Brigade

Our hand-picked environmental professionals, each part of the Public Insight Network, are on the hunt for "greenwash" as they examine eco-friendly claims by companies, governments and other groups. They ask tough questions about the mainstreaming of green, from the perspectives of people in the trenches who are focused on these issues 24/7.

Jim Nicolow

Jim Nicolow is a nationally recognized expert on sustainable design and leads the sustainability initiative for Lord, Aeck & Sargent, overseeing the incorporation of sustainable design strategies and features into the firm’s design projects. He is a LEED® Accredited Professional with extensive knowledge of the U.S. Green Building Council’s (USGBC) LEED rating system.

Janne K. Flisrand

Janne K. Flisrand has worked as an affordable housing and urban planning research consultant for five years, primarily supporting local non-profits. Her focus is on transit, transit-oriented design, affordable housing, and sustainability. Currently, she’s the program coordinator for Minnesota Green Communities, a program promoting affordable, healthy, sustainably built housing throughout Minnesota.

Heidi Siegelbaum

Heidi Siegelbaum is a principal with Calyx Sustainable Tourism and works primarily on advancing sustainable tourism practices. She also specializes in science translation, cross-border indicators with Canada, cross-disciplinary planning and environmental technical assistance to businesses. Previously, she was in-house legal counsel for EPA for industrial chemicals and biotechnology and the senior performance measure analyst with the Washington State Department of Ecology. She is on the technical advisory committee of the Seattle Culinary Academy and a long standing member of the Chefs Collaborative.

NOTE: The opinions expressed by the Greenwash Brigade bloggers and those providing comments are theirs alone, and do not reflect the opinions of American Public Media or its employees. American Public Media is not responsible for the accuracy of any of the information supplied by the Greenwash Brigade bloggers.

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