Green Even Ain’t so Green
Ok. So you know me. I’m a “greenie” or an “enviro” or a “Hippie Tree Hugger.” Whatever you call it, you know what I mean: I care about the environment and espouse that view most any chance I get and love to show off the impact “green” living can have.
But as a journalist, I also need to show when the best of the best aren’t actually so good.
To whit, the U.S. Green Building Council 2007 conference generated tons of waste:
How much trash does a “green” event produce? Evidently, a lot if you’re
the U.S. Green Building Council’s GreenBuild 2007. The annual
conference, held in Chicago last year, created 44 tons of waste.
Not such a good metric for a “green” event, is it? Not even when you consider that 40 of those tons of waste were diverted from landfills, as the DJC Green Building Blog also noted. That’s nice and all, but as the post points out, and the CEO of CleanScapes told me yesterday in an interview, it’s still wasteful even if it’s recycled or composted. Seriously, did all of that waste need to be generated in the first place? So much of what is created and used is not necessary. Even if it is recycled or composted, when you get rid of it, it’s still wasting resources such as energy and the materials.
We all need to change and we all need to be continually improving. As someone who works for Boeing that I interviewed today said, “It’s not enough to just be compliant anymore. We need continual improvement. That’s an excellent standard.”
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July 16th, 2008 05:16
One of the worst offenders at these conferences is press materials and other PR-related junk. Every company feels the need to produce these thick folders with fact sheets, press releases, DVDs, etc, the vast majority of which gets flipped through once and then dropped in some hotel garbage can.
I attended the Cannes ad festival a few years back, where every journalist is given a small mailbox in the conference center that every PR firm and ad agency and what have you can just stuff full of promotional junk. My friend weighed his final tally: 44 pounds of utterly useless garbage, most of it not recyclable. And the kicker is, ALL this shit can simply be sent digitally, which is how most journalists prefer it anyway.
Not sure where this actually ranks on the ladder of environmental offenders–keeping Al Gore’s house cool in the summer probably causes more pollution overall–but it’s really just a disgusting practice to which I hate being a party. I feel complicit cause I’m one of the people they’re producing it for. I wish they would just ask me – I’d tell them to stop wasting their money.
And you know, I hate the environment. I burn Styrofoam for laughs. Just to give you some perspective.
July 17th, 2008 14:37
[...] Zeke pointed out below, “green” trade shows are not the only ones that produce amazing amounts of waste. [...]