In the last few weeks, I've been to the LOHAS conference in Boulder, the Outdoor Retailer in Salt Lake City and last week, the SF Gift fair, all the while reading my Google reader for all the interesting articles from all the wonderful sources. That's a lot of contact with the retail and eco-spheres. In this short period of time, combined with the reception from the green community for our new neogreene material, I've been provided wonderful insights as to the expectations of the concept of Green.
For some time, I've been of the mind that Go Green is a rather simplistic marketing tool that many companies are using to claim green credentials to entice consumers to buy their products. To me, it's always been about Being Green, which, in my previously limited mindset, was the ongoing practice of making decisions with green as a high priority consideration. Thanks to Deb today, I've come to realize that to Be Green is to graduate from the more simplified Go Green on/off switch, to the more complex Be Green, the process of greener decision making.
Here's an example from our life. When we moved into our house 3 years ago, should we replace all incandescent lights in our house? The Go Green approach might be to say yes and go encourage the economy by acquiring a houseful of CFLs. Our Be Green decision was to look at the needs fixture by fixture. If we only replace the bulbs in the fixtures that are on a lot of the time, and save the bulbs we remove for the linen closet or the hallway, where we almost never turn the lights on, we may have 100 years worth of incandescents, replaced in a significantly smaller number of fixtures by the higher efficiency CFLs.
There are those who would support "replace them all". There are those that would say "don't buy CFLs, they have mercury" which is true. Somewhere between "replace them all" and "don't buy them" is where we found what to us made sense. We are now saving electricity, have lots of bulbs for the future and will deal with disposal of the CFLs when the time comes. We think that's being green.
Another person's answers to the same questions may be different. The criteria or situation may be different. Those answers are not wrong, just different. The important thing is to apply some thought. Go green is to make a single choice. Be green is to embrace a thought process that includes considerations our culture has not considered important for years, maybe forever (the West was to be tamed, the forests consumed, etc.).
All of us, asking more questions of ourselves, of each other, of our employers, of the stores we shop and the brands we buy, of our politicians, will lead us to an overall reconsideration of the assumptions that have led us to where we are. In an era of possibilities of overwhelming transparency via the web, we need to find what matters to each of us and Be Green about it.
To go a step further, tell others. That's what we now see as being GreenSmart. To be GreenSmart is to be grounded enough in your green decision making to be able to help others to understand what and where they have options they had not seen before. Where are you in the process? Act - Think - Teach.
For us to make eco-progress depends on everyone to be a teacher and everyone to be a student. Because Green is not a final destination, there will always be more to learn.
