When Do We Declare that a Company has "Gone Green?"
by Jeff McIntire-Strasburg, St. Louis, MO on 12.18.06
This could be a first -- a post on Hugg has generated a debate on one of the major green blogs. One Wednesday, December 13, prolific Hugger linton posted an item declaring "EPSON GOES GREEN!!!!!," which linked to a press release promoting the electronics manufacturer's "[plan] to change the packaging for its large format printer (LFP) ink cartridges from white cardboard to 100% recycled brown cardboard (kraft cardboard) and to standardize packaging specifications worldwide." The following day, Joel Makower took up linton's post on his "Two Step Forward" blog:
Today, it was a posting on Hugg, "a user-driven social content site," in the parlance of the Web. (Or, for Webheads, a "green Digg.") Hugg, produced by my friends at Treehugger, encourages users to post articles, blog entries, video clips, and other items of interest on green topics. Users show their support for the entries by "hugging" them.Joel's post spurred a discussion on his blog, which garnered another post on Hugg, which led to a response from linton declaring "I SUCK BIG TIME!"This entry caught my eye:
EPSON GOES GREEN!!!!!! Intriguing, to say the least, for those of us who follow corporate environmental initiatives. Reading further, and clicking through to the source story, revealed that Epson's revolutionary "greening" stemmed from its announcement that it plans to
change the packaging for its large format printer (LFP) ink cartridges from white cardboard to 100% recycled brown cardboard (kraft cardboard) and to standardize packaging specifications worldwide.To be fair, the company also said it will "change the plastic used in ink cartridge casings from gray to a natural color."
Epson deserves credit for this, of course, but I doubt that even the most ardent of its PR staffers would claim that the company has "gone green" (never mind the half-dozen exclamation points). This is, at best, a small step in a committed company's earnest efforts to reduce its environmental footprint.
We don't think you suck, linton, and we're pretty sure that's not what Joel was saying, either. Rather, this exchange has created an important discussion here in the green blogosphere: at what point has a company "gone green?" Should we only say, as JiltedCitizen suggests, that a company is "going green," which emphasizes movement towards a goal, rather than reaching the goal itself? Or, should we simply avoid these kinds of labels, and focus on judging these individual decisions, as well as practices that are decidedly "un-green" (or brown, maybe)? Do we reserve the title of "green" for those companies that have made it a core part of their business? How do we decide when they've done that? Finally, what actions by major corporations deserves the enthusiastic support of treehuggers? Which ones deserve... well, a bit less?
These kinds of discussions are certain to arise as large corporations take steps (many of them small) towards more eco-conscious ways of producing and marketing products and services. We think they're discussions worth having. As always, we invite you into the fray!
Hmmmm...maybe you need to work out what colour they are in the first place. Then you could be Blue With Green Spots, or Green With Dark Green Stripes, perhaps Red With A Green Sheen?
It's going to be tricky, what with all the Greenwashing we are likely to see. A impressive sounding press release for one aspect of a company's operation could divert attention from 2 or 3 more damaging aspects. Corporations are hard enough to track for people working within them, let alone for the rest of the world.
Some companies may have been green for years, they just have never been labelled as such. Other startups get all the EcoGraphicDesign done upfront, pushing all the right buttons, even though they may be just buying some offsets or perpetuating a bad system, just in a 7% less damaging way.
It's complicated.
It is surprising how many green websites take a PR release and print an article about it like it is the gospel truth, never even bothering to do a quick google to try to get at the very least a more rounded opinion about what is going on. Rather than read between the lines and see the unlerlying corporate motivation, a lot of these trusting souls post these PR statements with a cheery enthusisam. They don't take into account corporations hire enire PR firms at megabuck rates to come up with things like the unbelievable "Shell Draws a Bright Line, No Fuel for Food" (Treehugger post) which makes one wonder whether to laugh or cry. A PR statement shouldn't ever be taken at face value, but rather as a topic for research. It is rarely simple or even honest, there are usually two opposing sides. To support the one in the PR statement without questioning it is asking to be mislead.
Jeff, this is a very valid conversation. I'm happy there are no 'sides' here! I understand the point Joel was making, and with possible suggestion of omitting Linton's name, I wouldn't change a thing. Linton, of course, is doing a great job of keeping green news flowing.
One thing I notice throughout this tiniest of controversies is the great atmosphere! It's great that people are (at Treehugger, at Hugg, and at Makower.com) managing to 'talk' and remain civil.
Also, today I was thinking about the future of business myself, and touched on some areas that might be of interest to people in this thread should they care to swing by.
Some one explain why green washing is bad? When a company is accused of the so called green washing, they recognized that people are concerned about the environment. That's a good step. They could just ignore it. Business's can't turn around their processes over night. Treehuggers do not have enough clout yet to start criticizing what wasn't done.
They could ignore it jiltedcitizen, they could also use it cynically to make their products seem cleaner than they really are.
I would see greenwashing as when it is style over substance. Being 'green' is such a complex problem, as there are still many views and many known unknowns and even unknown unknowns. (I'm sure Rummy knows what I mean). We all need to focus on objective things. Which is difficult when the big picture is so big.
Espon brings soy ink to the masses they be pseudo-green. It's no secret they make their profit on their ink and it pollutes.
When Epson brings soy ink to the masses they be pseudo-green. It's no secret they make their profit on their ink and it pollutes.