The green bandwagon (solar, recycle, organic, gas)
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Just can't get over how many companies are jumping on the green bandwagon and half the time what they are doing is no better or sometimes worse than what was done before.
Where I work, we get large equipment shipped to us in what the manufacturer calls "envirocrates". These are metal crates with folding gates that allow the equipment to be removed and the crate sent back to the manufacturer for reuse. Sounds great, right? Reuse, recycle?
Wrong. They used to send the equipment on wooden crates. The wooden crates would come to us, we had to pay a small fee for the crates. In turn, we would stack the wood crates behind the building. Once a week, a company would come BUY the crates from us and reuse them locally, sometimes the crates would get shredded and the wood chips used for landscaping projects.
Now, instead of the wood crates that weighed roughly 30-50 pounds and would get recycled locally, we get metal crates that weigh roughly 125-150 pounds. Then they are shipped back to WISCONSIN from Tennessee. By the time you figure the extra fuel needed for the crates to be shipped to us, then an 18 wheeler driving 900 miles to take them back there is nothing being done that is better for the environment. Whats funny is now the manufacturer charges us a high fee for the envirocrates, which of course gets passed on to the final buyer.
This is why I hate the green bandwagon. There is too much garbage that IS NOT DOING ANYTHING BETTER, but since it is "going green", or "environmentally friendly", everyone just smiles and says "oh look, we're helping save the planet".
THINK ABOUT THINGS BEFORE YOU ASSUME SOMETHING IS ACTUALLY GOOD FOR THE ENVIRONMENT. Its not always good, like ethanol and other bogus "environmentally friendly" alternatives being packaged and sold to us. Think it through, and when you run into things that are bogus, write the manufacturer and tell them what you think.
Yes, that's precisely why at least in the building industry ther eis a LEED certification process and it is pretty strict. However, I find it very interesting when watching the news the other night that one of our new subdivisions will have "environmentally friendly housing", however they CLEARCUT THE TREES WHICH WERE THERE. Do not buy into this type of hype. It is getting to the point where consumers are just gonna be sick of it all anyway.
It is a challenge to extract the genuine GREEN from the hyped up green. You've all given some great examples. However, let us be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater because there are some genuinely good GREEN ideas floating around out there. As always, buyer beware! A little bit of good old common sense doesn't hurt either.
It is a challenge to extract the genuine GREEN from the hyped up green. You've all given some great examples. However, let us be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater because there are some genuinely good GREEN ideas floating around out there. As always, buyer beware! A little bit of good old common sense doesn't hurt either.
Excellent point .
Just like "regular" consumerism, we vote with our dollars. It might take a bit of effort, but we can support the genuine green products and ignore the hyped ones and effect change.
The company I work for has an active "Green" campaign. It is a large privately held company, and the owner-CEO is quite convinced that "trying to do the right thing" is good long term corporate policy. He drives a Prius instead of Beemer to work, and is into organic farming too.
It's not easy because the large private corporation has many different lines of businesses, and some of them are admittedly not very green. For example, one of the corporate affiliates (NOT where I work) is one of the biggest junk mail advertisers in the country that fills up your mailbox with junk that goes right to the trash. Ok, they might be using non toxic ink and non-virgin paper, but it still ends up in the trash.
On the other hand at my place of work they give out free bus passes (few people take them), pay gas for people who use van pools, have a solar electric plant on the rooftop, got rid of disposable cups in the building, swapped bottled water service for tap water filter systems, installed countless lower energy lights, etc.
I do my part by bicycle commuting every day, but it's not a "green thing" for me, it just happens to be something I enjoy a lot and it makes me feel half my age of 53.
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