by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
Recently I wrote about the cloth tea bag and about the reinvention of the glass bottle for carrying (TAP) water, and at a much earlier time I have dealt with the “money for old rope” issue and also the greenwashed “Eco Button, and I wonder, to be honest, what it is going to be next that I will have to tackle.
It is not the products themselves that I have a problem with but the fact that they are being made out to be so green and environmentally friendly and marketed, often, with total greenwash and are sold at prices that are just not affordable to most ordinary punters.
US$18 and more for something that you can make yourself by simply repurposing and upcycling, in this case a glass bottle, makes no sense and is a rip off.
While I had and still do have an issue with the cloth tea bags – set of 3 for $9 – the idea of those has been around for donkeys years and been used by the poor folks of America especially in lieu of a metal tea infuser, which were expensive in the 19th century, for instance.
There seem to be no end of individual “artists”, as well as small and large companies, who seem to look at the green consumer as someone to be milked and nothing more.
Ethics? What ethics?
They seem to be employing the selfsame tactics as all capitalists do; creating a need which really is a want by claiming that this or that product is ever so green and needed for a real green lifestyle and then going after maximum profit.
I had hoped, and I sure am not on my own in this, that we all would be looking at it in a different light, including those that make things for sale, but everywhere I look there seems to be nothing but greenwash, with very few exceptions.
How, for instance, can one market bottled water as “ethical water”? And still some do. Very much in the same way as some have started to market concrete and plywood as green and environmentally friendly.
If it would not be so very sad that the ordinary punter is, as per usual, being bamboozled and fleeced, one could but laugh about it.
Talking of things bamboo, as in bamboozled; that plant, or more precise, grass, is yet another one of those where greenwash is rather liberally applied.
Bamboo flooring is being tauted as a green alternative to hardwood flooring. How that can be thus beats me for bamboo flooring is, in fact, a laminate flooring and bamboo cannot be made into planks, for instance, and boards.
The same is true for clothing made from bamboo fiber. Bamboo fiber is nothing more than a viscose and produced in exactly the same way. Nothing green about it, whatsoever, except the plant in its original form.
Integrity and ethnics seem to be short in supply even among those that produce “green” products and goods and who provide “green” services.
Even and especially products from recycled items seem to the most expensive, with one exception, it would seem, and that is TerraCycle.
The green consumer is being taken to the cleaner and, alas, he or she often does not even realize that.
And end must be put to those sharp practices and we use discernment of the highest order and must vote with our pocketbook. That is the only way the message will ever get across.
© 2010
