I think that there are very few truly "green" products. The Prius seems green, until you realize how much environmental damage is caused by the batteries inside of it. It lowers gasoline usage, but increases the use of other toxins.

Not to ignore the "biz" part of the Greenbiz site, I do have to question why the answer to environmental issues is always to buy a green product, rather than use less of non-green product. Products that truly change how something is done is a great use of monetary resources, so I am all about buying something I need with, say less packaging (or, in our digital age, no packaging), so sometimes buying a product IS the solution to being more environmentally conscious.

However, ultimately, if we're going to make a sea-change in the way the world thinks about consumption, we have to point them to the first of the three R's: reduce. Consume less conspicuously, re-use that old rag instead of buying a bunch of new "green" rags. Get your old TV fixed instead of buying a new EnergySTAR TV.

To me, the most environmentally-friendly cars on the road are the used cars that don't get tossed into the junkyard just because they're not the newest model.

Thanks for the article.

Nick Sweeney
http://dotloop.com

'Green' as a specific term/philosophy fundamentally started as an environmental concept, not covering a broader social, environmental and economic framework. It is one color in the rainbow of good business practices.

Marketers, seeking to capture emerging trends, have simply tried to extend this blanket to consumer concerns like equitable trade/labor, local sourcing, good workplace, supporting communities, etc... Folks like Adam Werbach would tell us this is Blue, not green (or greenwashing if it isn't true in practice). The blanket really wasn't made to cover such a big area, so yes, it leaves many things in the cold.

Organizations like Co-op/Green America have likewise used the term to describe what would more appropriately be called social responsibility or some similar term.

Consumers are also clearly confused as to what "green" means. The Hartmann group's seminal sustainability work shows that consumers define fair trade, fair workplace and the like as green practices.

Marketers and non-profits simply to be overselling the term, and consumers are accordingly expecting more...and bound to get less than this.

In truth, many things billed as "green" aren't even comprehensive models of better environmental practices. Many companies have jumped on the "going green" PR wagon standing solely on limited (though critical) efforts such as addressing climate change, offering a few energy-efficient products and the like, while failing to address other environmental issues whether that be water use, solid waste, etc. Many companies are also doing only what saves or makes money, not coming close to addressing their real eco-impact and driving the level of change needed.

On a tangential point, "cheaper" as an expectation is a challenging one for some sectors, if we are to define cost solely by what the consumer pays at the register, gas pump, etc. Take food/ag. Non-organic ag (what some call "conventional," though organic far predates the use of petro-based inputs, GMOs, hormones, etc) is highly subsidized by government through various programs so consumers don't pay the true cost at the store. We pay it through taxes, polluted water, health issues related to agro-chemical ingestion/contact, etc. Organic is not subsidized as such, so consumers are asked to pay the full cost. A similar case can be made for non-renewable vs renewable energy sources, though financial supports for the latter are finally expanding. Perhaps if we looked @ full cost accounting greener would be cheaper.

Melissa Schweisguth
Full Circle Enterprise Solutions
twitter.com/fullcircsustain

I fully agree - being greener isn't necessarily the same as being better.

Were the world perfect, all the external, environmental costs of manufacturing and using more polluting products would be internalized in their prices, thus making greener products cheaper, easier and more attractive than others. However, in the world we have right now, "green" is just one selling point among many.

In our line of work - research and design of more sustainable products and services - we always emphasize that green isn't enough. I usually tell clients that you need to have the following arguments right first:

1) price
2) quality
3) ease of use
4) availability

If these are at adequate level, then, maybe, number five argument would be "green."

HOWEVER, we still think that sustainable design is a great source of innovation. It's almost an axiom that good design and, indeed, innovation flows from tight constraints - and what else are sustainable design principles than voluntary, motivating constraints?

(For more about the link between resource constraints and innovation, see e.g. http://sloanreview.mit.edu/the-magazine/articles/2007/spring/48308/in-pr... Disclosure: Liisa Välikangas is my PhD supervisor.)

For example, we've been - I think - pretty successful in creating real, tangible benefits to our clients by thinking their problems through with sustainable design principles in mind. One quantified example involved cutting more than 40 % of CO2 emissions AND 30 % of manufacturing costs (and, incidentally, introducing re-use possibility) from certain exhibition designs we've done; in another we made entire architectures from easily recyclable cardboard-based material and thus saved considerable storage space with their attendant costs.

This kind of "green lite" with emphasis on cost savings, new innovations and other benefits isn't the perfect solution, but I think it's necessary at this stage to create buy-in within sometimes suspicious companies. It's also necessary, in my opinion, to demonstrate in practice and via small steps that being green doesn't necessarily mean being more expensive or otherwise worse off. (My hat's off to Interface here - great comment, and we've been using you as one example case with great success!)

Best,

Janne Korhonen
partner, Seos Design
www.seos.fi

Well, when "better" now equals worse later, is it really better, especially when it's combined with inaccurate, non-full-cost prices?

Yes, green products need to be better, but both need to reflect full costs and neither should be harmful to the environment in any way. Ultimately, the environmental effect of products needs to be restorative.

The success of green products in the marketplace -- better or not -- cannot happen when the marketplace is full of the equivalent of low-cost, environmentally toxic, "dumped" goods. There are some associated policy solutions that are required if we really want to enable a fair, competitive marketplace for products where the innovation spurred by competition is not between "worse" green vs "better" toxic goods, but between worse and better green products, and their continual improvement within an environmentally benign or restorative context, price signals, and design parameters.

I güess that many "green" practices or "green" products have been published in that way because the market didn't understand the cost of the change in it's consumption current. Maybe the term "green" was more explainable.
Perhaps it's the time to say it...
I agree your proposal.
Greetings,

Eduardo Dios
Peru

So then, how about the idea of the triple bottom line?

It seems that the goal here is to effectively market--and have a business value to back--the trifecta hat trick: better product/service and true savings, less negative or a neutral or a positive environmental impact, and a social benefit.

What to do? Market them equally? Play your strongest card? Always emphasize the savings value?

I think the point is to realize that we're trying to span a greater spectrum of consciousness and resources, so ALL of the definitions of better are important (though the dominant fear area is currently in the economy, so price is going to speak to the greatest number of people).

But to be able to have that ability, the product/service does indeed need to be better...in every way.

Here's how we're trying to put the pieces together:
http://www.betterworldtelecom.com/commitment/betterwork.php

Jacob Griscom
W. Regional Mgr - BetterWorld Telecom

I enjoyed your article. The problem in my opinion is…what is the best answer for solving environmental issues? I believe that there isn’t any one answer or magic bullet that will answer all our pollution problems. Recycling sounds like the perfect answer but it too has problems and that’s probably why most of the things we toss end up in a landfill. Reusing sounds like the answer but manufacturers have built in product obsolescence for more than fifty years. Our industrial complex has been built around the idea of the more we use the more jobs we’ll have. I believe that the answer for solving our environmental issues lies in a combination of all the adjectives you listed. If we are going to help our environment and leave our planet a healthier place for future generations we’re going to have to start thinking “Cradle to Cradle” with every product that is produced. We as consumers need to demand that manufacturers take stewardship for the products they make. Products need to be designed to be green through every stage of a product lifecycle.
We are an environmental company that got involved in the plastic bottle industry because we saw a huge growing problem. We didn’t think that plastic containers were going away any time soon, so we felt that a realistic approach would be to develop a plastic container that was more “cradle to cradle” in design. We know that our bottle the ENSO biodegradable plastic bottle isn’t the final perfect answer for solving plastic bottle pollution, but it is a big step in the right direction. Our bottle is designed to biodegrade in a microbial environment leaving behind biogases and humus. We realize that methane, one of the biogases produced during biodegradation, is a green house producing gas. However, captured methane can be used to produce clean energy. Thinking cradle to cradle is about how the product is made, used, recycled and most importantly what happens at the end of life of a product. Most plastic products (70-80 percent) are ending up in a landfill, which is the reason ENSO promotes the development of bioreactor landfills. Bioreactor landfills are a modern designed landfill that enhances biodegradation and is designed to more efficiently capture landfill gases (LFG’s). Landfill gases are a natural byproduct of all landfills and per government mandate are now being captured or burnt off. We feel that best “cradle to cradle” approach is to design landfills that are more efficient at capturing and using LFG’s and using those LFG’s as a clean energy source.
Max
http:///www.ensobottles.com

Many green products today are following early examples we witnessed in the green building movement. Their designers are slapping on the easiest green attribute to race to the market to get a plaque for the wall (or a label on the box). Superficial thinking creates only marginal, and mostly boring, innovation. Bigger, more compelling opportunities exist by digging deeper to redesign systems and challenging the basic mindset behind the system. There is no doubt that the iPod designers did this.

What happens when you add electric car charging stations, employee showers (that never get used), triple glazed windows and an expensive HVAC plant to the same building as you designed last year? Yep, it costs more and is only marginally more efficient. Chances are its less comfortable. Substitute a "more responsible" material in a product made in 1IR (1st Industrial Revolution) technology and mindset and many times you get compromised performance or customer value. Today's products are highly optimized for the systems that exist to produce them and the mindset behind the system. To reach new levels of value (better) bigger opportunities are found by redesigning the system and challenging the entire paradigm. That's what the best architects are doing in the building world and the best product designers.

Many of Interface's product innovations that delivered the greatest reduction in real environmental impact are not marketed primarily as "green products." They are better products. See Entropy and Tactiles. Looking through the lens of sustainability and Biomimicry more specifically, our designers and engineers imagined alternative ways to deliver better value that required recreating delivery systems and challenging entrenched mindsets.

For instance with Entropy, a carpet tile with a random pattern on its face, our designer challenged the most basic assumption of the entire quality movement, sameness. Our 6 Sigma psychos had spent decades clawing up the curve of increased conformity to that place where they could make 10,000 carpet squares exactly the same. (only 1 could be different and achieve 6 sigma) You can imagine the reaction when our designer asked if we could make every single one different! Heresy! What happened was an entire new class of products that brought a range of new values to the customer, and our accountants, in terms of installation efficiency, durability, repairability, inventories, etc. By the way, it was such a hit in the market that the patent and copyright infringement law suits are still going on 8 years later.

With Tactiles, we stopped trying to invent a greener, healthier glue to stick carpets to the floor and learned from geckos, fly feet, feathers, and other teachers that nature doesn't do glue. We redefined the carpet tile installation system to tack the tiles together and let gravity do its thing with no glue on the floor. This new method is sold as faster, cheaper, more easily repaired. If you look on the back of some of the marketing stuff, you'll find a little LCA spider diagram that shows that the process has a 90% reduction in average environmental impact compared to buckets of glue.

Make no mistake, small steps are vital to get the organization going and thinking differently. The problem is if you let small wins lull you into sleep as whiffs of the opiate of the status quo whispering "don't worry, be happy."

We can do better. Our customers and our kids deserve it.

Jim Hartzfeld
Managing Director - InterfaceRAISE LLC