try GREEN on for size

One of the first expressions of the “green” movement in popular culture that struck me was the eco-fashion movement. At Fashion Week in New York in January, a show called FutureFashion displayed the environmentally friendly styles – usually made from organic materials and natural dyes - from famous designers including Versace and Calvin Klein. Eco-boutiques have been popping up across the country - the first one I ever saw was Envi on Newbury St. in Boston. If there is any way to merge sustainability and consumerism, this must be it… right? Not necessarily.

As I’ve said before, the best way to be an environmentally conscious consumer is to buy nothing at all (which is great for broke college students), but as a nonmaterial girl living in a material world, I know that people just don’t give you the kind of attention necessary to make real change if you walk in the door with HIPPIE written all over you.

So, since we have to shop (or so we think) of course it’s better to buy “eco-friendly” fashions than not, but I see some flaws in “green” style fad. First of all, just as we need to sort out greenwashing corporations in all of our consumption, it’s important to distinguish between clothes that are actually sustainable, and those that are abusing the green trend to make sales. Graphic Ts featuring recycling symbols, trees, and crying globes are all the rage – but buying lots of trendy t-shirts, even if they’re made from organic materials and natural dyes, is not the best way to sport a sustainable style. Second of all, I find it to be unrealistic and unfair that eco-friendly clothing tends to be high-end and high-cost, so it’s hard for those who are truly living minimally (ahem, broke college students) to shop at eco boutiques.

Fortunately for those who are on a budget, there are ways to look green and great without breaking the bank. Jill Danyelle, who experimented with sustainable style through her project in fashion and sustainability called fiftyRx3, applied the environmental concept of the 3 Rs (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle) concept for waste management in greening her wardrobe.

Jill explains the application of the 3 Rs in fashion as:

Reduce = using environmentally friendly fabrics and dyes and production

Reuse = wearing clothes from the past (instead of buying new ones)

Recycle = making clothes out of something else

Here's my take:

REDUCE.

If you’ve really got to go out and buy something new, I think that it’s important to ‘reduce’ in more than one way. Of course by buying clothing with a reduced environmental impact, but also by buying less. There are multiple benefits to this:
1) You’re lowering your environmental impact because you are lowering the demand for the production of new clothes, which uses energy in manufacture and transport.
2) You’re saving money! (This is pretty exciting to me). This means that if you are buying less low-cost but maybe less environmentally friendly or socially responsible, you have more money to buy more from more expensive, socially and environmentally conscious shops – and if this gives you the opportunity to support a local business it’s even better.

REUSE.

Keep it simple. Different looks come in and out of style, but if you are already reducing your shopping habits , you are more likely to be buying simpler clothes (less flashy / trendy prints) which means that they are less likely to become fashion no-nos anytime too soon. Also, seemingly plainer clothes tend to match with more outfits, so you can wear them more often and in lots of different ways - American Apparel, (pictured) though a tad bit expensive, is great for simple clothes - and productions is sweatshop-free and made in the USA - I almost always wear solid colors but I like to get a few accessories that I can pair with a variety of outfits so that I can mix and match and get really creative.


Go vintage or hand-me-down. Different looks come in and out of style, and this means that if it was hip once, it's probably going to be hip again. Buying fashionable clothes second-hand is a great way to look chic with a small environmental footprint - and I'm not talking about shopping at Salvation army or Goodwill. There are lots of cool second-hand boutiques where you can find chic clothes for cheap. My personal favorites are Second Time Around and The Closet in Boston, and Ragtime in Chapel Hill, NC.

RECYCLE.


Recycling old clothes into new can be time consuming, but what better a way to artistically express yourself through fashion? My personal favorite example of this is underwear made from recycled t-shirts, but this bag made from recycled t-shirts is another pretty awesome example.





AND NOW, I make my first ever video appearance on my blog to weigh in with some examples of my very own sustainable style! Please forgive the pathetic editing... I'm new at this.

For more, check out this article by E magazine.

green humor

It's sustainable satire ... the comics have gone green for Earth Day!

green your ________.

This is a very cool new website that tells you how to "green" just about anything: GreenYour.com

"eco-shape" bottle

I know I might be beating this 'green' marketing thing to death here, but this is the perfect example of what I am talking about:
The Eco Shape Bottle. It's all the rage from the bottled water companies - and of course it's better than using a regular plastic water bottle.

But honestly people. How can the words bottled water and eco really be used in the same advertisement? Bottled water is one of the most wasteful inventions of our lovely oh so unsustainable society. According to treehugger, "Approximately 1.5 million barrels of oil—enough to run 100,000 cars for a whole year—are used to make plastic water bottles, while transporting these bottles burns even more oil." What's more, "Nearly 90 percent of water bottles are not recycled and wind up in landfills where it takes thousands of years for the plastic to decompose."

The only real eco-shape bottle is a reusable water bottle like these from Sigg or Klean Kanteen.

the master's tools: thoughts on consumer culture and the "green" revolution

"The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house"
-Audre Lourde

When I was talking to a friend recently about our efforts in the youth climate movement, she brought up this quote. Granted, in this essay Aurdre Lourde was writing about nothing directly related to global warming or sustainability, but the quote struck me as oddly applicable to one of the more stark contradictions that I find in our consumer culture's adaptation of the "green" movement ...

One of the best ways to be sustainable is to live simply, to break from the norm of overconsumption that exists in this country and to buy less. Out of the three R's, it is first about REDUCING, then REUSING, and then recycling. So whether or not a company is environmentally and socially benign or a raging greenwasher, is "green" marketing as an effort to sell more products contradictory to living simply , one of the central themes of sustinability? Can we shape a culture of sustainability using master consumerism's tools of advertising and marketing goods?

In some respects, I do think that it is possible. Just because things are heating up in the stratosphere, our water is a little contaminated, and there are workers being mistreated, we're not going to just STOP spending money. Unfortunately, despite all of its externalities, the economic show must go on. So if businesses and corporations are actually working to reduce their environmental impact and to be more socially responsible (see "echoing eco" to find out how to tell whether they are greenwashing or not), we should be supporting those venues as opposed to other ones.

But sustainability is not just about production - a big chunk of a sustainable transformation will have to happen on the consumption side of the market. Is all of the hype about sustainability and "going green" really going to have a substantial impact on reforming the unsustainable way that Americans overconsume?

Green marketing gets the idea out there, it certainly puts some concept of sustainability on the average person's radar - and this is great. But just because it's popular, I don't think that tomorrow, everyone in America is going to wake up and think, "I'm going to go green today." And for those who do decide to hop on the green bandwagon because it is trendy and cool, how does this ensure that these people are living the message of the movement? One of the problems that I see now that the 'green' revolution has reached the tipping point is that it has become so trendy that it's hard to distinguish between those businesses, people and practices that are truly environmentally sustainable and those that are just a part of the fad.

Sure, you can wear a shirt with a recycling symbol on it, you can buy a hybrid car, you can put solar panels on your house; but if you have three closets full of organic cotton clothes, if you drive your hybrid 500 mi each week, or if your McMansion is running on 10% solar power, I don't think that we can really call this a sustainable lifestyle. (For example, above we see Julia Robert's new eco-friendly Mansion - do you see the oxymoron in this?)

The truth I think that green marketing, media, and messaging is an effective way of getting this "green" movement started. But these tools alone will not dismantle the master's unsustainable house - they can only make waves to a certain extent. Hopefully, they were serve their purpose of introducing the vague idea of environmental sustainability into the mainstream, so that we can build a truly sustainable culture of simply living and environmental/social consciousness from there.

"Live simply so others may simply live."

echoing eco: a critical look at "green" marketing

Of course, if people are buying into Green,the market is going to sell it. Green advertising is one of the fastest growing trends in marketing. Even Wal-Mart, notorious among the activist community for their social irresponsibility, has launched an Eco Campaign. BP- yes, the oil company - began marketing themselves as "Beyond Petroleum" to tout their alternative energy investment initiatives.

When fighting global warming is hot, there is a strong incentive from the business perspective to hop on the green-wagon (in general I think this is a good thing, but I've still got some further thoughts on this for a later post). This brings up a critical question...

If we are trying to "vote with our dollars" by buying from sustainable companies, how do we know if these businesses are practicing what they preach?

A recent study completed by environmental marketing firm Terrachoice found that 99% of "green" marketing labels were either false or misleading. Greenwashing is defined by CorpWatch as "the phenomena of socially and environmentally destructive corporations, attempting to preserve and expand their markets or power by posing as friends of the environment." The following interview with the President of Terrachoice, Scott McDougall explains the "six sins of greenwashing."



So much of this "green" advertising could be a bunch of "all natural cyanide," so to speak. In order to protect ourselves from buying the faux-green products, we've got to be skeptical. Planet Green suggested asking questions before buying such as

1. Where did this material come from?
2. What are the byproducts of its manufacture?
3. How is the material delivered and installed?
4. How is the material maintained and operated?
5. How healthy is the material?
6. What do we do with the material once we’re done with it?

And of course, checking for certifications from well known programs such as

Green-e, EcoLogo, and Green Seal.

Unsuitablog also suggested looking out for buzzwords and phrases, and poor use of scientific facts.


But if you were to go to the store right now - not Whole Foods or Trader Joe's, just average Joe's store - or to flip through magazine advertisements, or to watch TV commercials, do you think that you would know who's greenness is for real? Here's a quick test to get an idea of your green IQ:

With their Ecomagination campaign, GE is claiming that

"Ecomagination puts into practice GE's belief that financial and environmental performance can work together to drive company growth, while taking on some of the world's biggest challenges. Learn about the GE commitment to products and services that are as economically advantageous as they are ecologically sound."

Are they for real?




Starbucks claims that

"Contributing positively to our communities and environment is so important to Starbucks that it’s one of the six guiding principles of our mission statement."

Are they for real?





On their website, Clorox writes,

"With Green Works cleaners, Clorox has set a new standard for natural cleaning – the products are as effective as conventional cleaners in its category but made from plant-based ingredients."

Are they for real?


How did you do? If you want more, a good website to sample some greenwashing ads is the Greenwashing Index, where people post ads and others rate them 1-5 on level of greenwashing (the only problem is a lot of the ads are car companies, oil companies, and energy companies - which is also quite ironic). For information about specific products, Coop America's Responsible Shopper guide can be helpful, and I really like the Climate Counts Scorecard site as well.

consumption nightmare

"We live in a culture that tells us that bigger is better, selling the belief that big houses, expensive cars and more stuff will make us happier - and we buy this idea, even if we don't have the money for any of it. We are told that quantity is more important than quality. It's not just at McDonald's - our society as a whole embraces supersize..."

This is one of my opinion columns for the Diamondback - the University of Maryland's Student Newspaper. Check it out HERE

stripping down sustainability

The main force behind this blog is the current ECOdemic - the infiltration of the "green" movement into so many aspects of our society today, especially the arts, the media, and the market. But with so many catch phrases and definitions associated with the word "green," before I get this blog rolling I think it's important that I step back and define what the concept of sustainability means to me.

Sustainability: Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

This is the general definition crafted by the 1987 World Commission on Environment and Development (also known as the Brundtland Commission). The definition is broad and general, and can be interpreted in a number of ways.

One of the greatest misconceptions about sustainability is the perception that it is a purely environmental agenda, one that requires sacrifice of higher standard of living. In actuality, the concept of sustainability is often broken down into to 3 parts - economic, environmental, and social sustainability, which interact in sustainable development.


Sustainability requires change, not sacrifice; it is a new quality of life. It is not necessarily a goal to reach or an ultimate outcome, because it deals with the most dynamic processes: human society and our natural resources.

Rather, sustainability is a way of being, a recognition of the interdependency of humans and the earth, and humans ourselves. Sustainability is a part of this ideology built on the idea of interconnectivity, a philosophy allows the individual to view herself not as her own entity, but rather as a unique component of her society and her environment, each of which work to shape her as well.

Today being "green" is sexy, it's fun, it's cool, and it's getting easier every day - the trick is to continually think critically about the different "shades" of green. Because in a society born out of raw individualism, creating a culture of sustainability is going to take a massive transformation of our current way of life, and the values and norms by which we measure our standard of living.

The question is, is a "green" fad going to send us in the right direction, or does spreading the idea of sustainability through consumerism and popular culture contradict its inherent purpose?