Companies today are not interested in taking steps toward improving the health of our ecosystem but in finding ways to persuade you to buy whatever item or service they have to offer. For the last 50 years the best way to sell was to offer cheap goods, and the cheapest product or provider usually won, and with it came the rise of big businesses — almost always more capable of offering a less expensive product than their small-town competitors.
We are now starting to see the blossoming of a society of environmentally sensitive citizens who would rather shell out a few extra bucks for something eco-friendly. Businesses are obliging. In a society driven by materialism like ours, it was almost too easy to convince us we can still buy all the things we love so dearly while helping our good friend, Mother Earth. The fact is you can’t, and big businesses don’t care. As long as they can run a successful advertising campaign preaching “green” elements and persuade you to buy from them, their job is done. It is sometimes called “greenwashing.”
The problem is they’ve done a good job.
The hybrid car is a wonderful example of greenwashing. We’ve all seen the commercial where everyone holds their breath, anticipating a Toyota driving by, only to grab a quick gasp of clean, unsoiled air. I call shenanigans. Yes, hybrid cars use less gasoline, and for a lot of reasons that’s great—but not for the environment.
Firstly, hybrids are much more complicated than their internal-combustion counterparts and need more energy to produce. Most hybrids use a nickel metal hydride system, which requires nickel mining and all the environmental evils that come with it. After the batteries die, they either rot in a landfill (very bad) or get recycled, which takes money and requires even more energy. Hybrids don’t last as long as comparable cars. Even if all of this wasn’t true, hybrids still require gasoline, so it’s not like you’re not hurting the planet — you’re merely hurting it less. The entire life of a hybrid isn’t all that green, even if you don’t notice while you’re getting 50 mpg.
Wal-Mart’s new “green” marketing campaign is another case. They’ve gone as far as to begin listing which products are “greener” than others so you can leave the establishment with some sort of moral victory.
I don’t care what Wal-Mart tells you, but no matter what you buy from there it almost always came from China on a shipping freight, often cited as the most pollutant form of transportation in existence. But as long as they convince you you’re helping the environment and you buy their products, they’re happy.
If we want to be environmentalists we need to be conscious of what impact a product has from the beginning to the end of its life. Our interest is in saving and sustaining the planet. A personal victory like a hybrid car is all for naught when you realize it hurts our world more than a Hummer (as some claim) regardless of its mpg.
That being said, there is legitimate action we can take, but you have to be willing to find it. Nobody makes money off the real solutions, and that’s why no one is pushing them. Things like riding a bicycle, buying things made locally and not buying things at all is far more beneficial for the planet than buying something with an eco-friendly sticker on it. Learning to live with less—smaller houses, smaller cars, fewer clothes, sharing books and videogames, sharing rooms—is the best thing we can do.
In a world driven by excess that’s a hard message to preach, but that is what it’s going to take if we legitimately care about sustaining humanity.
It’s going to take sacrifice to save the earth (a concept we as Americans struggle with), but you simply cannot buy the planet’s future, and businesses don’t want you to know that. Do your research, try to look at the big picture and don’t be tricked into thinking you’re helping when you’re not.
If you’re trying to buy back the environment, I wouldn’t hold your breath.
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TAG 2 years, 3 months ago
So true, that is why we need to purchase locally. Americans will find this concept very hard to wrap their minds around. We aren't able to sacrifice for future generations. In a world where 6.3 billion people want to live like 300 million Americans, things don't look pretty in the future. I hope that we can lead in example, but that of course is a fairy tale.
MSrob 2 years, 3 months ago
Good article. The worse part of the "green" consumer-packaged-goods market is that it often increases the overall amount of pollution produced. Although an Ecotainer may biodegrade in a decade, the chemicals it takes to make it biodegradable will pollute rivers and lakes for generations!