Last month I posited that one of the keys to a successful transition toward electric vehicles is that these vehicles must be utilitarian in design, speaking specifically of trucks and vans, and now a company in Boulder, Colorado is offering up a truly viable 2-ton cargo truck, and they’ve sold their first fleet!
The Boulder EV is the first electric commercial truck capable of reaching 70 mph. bit.ly/zBFwQA—
(@inhabitat) February 06, 2012
A few weeks ago, I wrote about the phenomenon of Brownwashing, a new twist on the well-established practice of Greenwashing.
Brownwashing is the term used to describe business practices that exploit a new consumer awareness that brown paper products can be made from recycled materials, and that they can be products not whitened with toxic chlorine bleach. This, of course, would not be an issue if it weren’t for the fact that paper can now be whitened without the use of chlorine, and one company has taken it one step further, adding brown dye to their product in order to capitalize on this new brown-is-green association.
Enter Method, a company that is founded on sustainable principles, a company that sells non-toxic cleaning products packaged in recycled plastic bottles, and yet a company that has made a conscious choice to not identify as a “green.”
Via GreenBiz.com:
In a wide-ranging conversation with GreenBiz Executive Editor Joel Makower today at the State of Green Business Forum, Lowry and Ryan explained why a company created 12 years ago with environmental responsibility written into its DNA would distance itself from the green label.
“We don’t run from the green, we just don’t make that the lead story,” Ryan said…
Consumers want better products, not necessarily greener products, according to Method Co-Founder Adam Lowry.
That means creating products that work better and give consumers a selfish reason to buy them, even if that reason is simply convenience. But if the only differentiator is a better environmental profile, forget about it.
It’s a rather subversive take on sustainability, and I find myself having mixed feelings about it.
On one hand, I admire the commitment to not take the easy way out by using green graphics and ad copy to market a product just because the green-is-good association exists.
On the other, it somehow strikes me as cynical, defeatist, and even counterproductive to declare so boldly that “consumers want better products, not necessarily greener products,” even if, for now, there’s some truth to it.
If ever there was a fad with a net upside it might be green products, even though some Greenwashing might be taking place.
Anyone REALLY paying attention to issues of environmental protection and sustainability knows about the nefarious practice of Greenwashing, whereby companies and their PR firms make questionable claims that their products are eco-friendly, exaggerate just how eco-friendly they are, or worse, make no claims at all, but by adding green color and graphics of green leaves and trees and such to the packaging, they try to pass off a product that has no special eco-friendly attributes as one that does.
I heard a snippet of a piece on the public radio show Marketplace this morning, that appears to have been taken from an article in the Wall Street Journal, about how brown is the new green:
When consumers see brown they think green, say companies that sell products like paper towels, napkins and diapers.
Dunkin’ Brands Inc. and Target Corp.’s in-store cafes among other chains have made the switch from white to brown napkins. Next week, Cascades Tissue Group is trying what marketers long considered the unthinkable: brown toilet paper. It is pitching beige rolls, dubbing the product “Moka.”
Brown paper products are becoming an obvious way for consumers to show that they care about the environment. They assume the products are made with recycled materials or didn’t involve whitening chemicals.
Now, however, white paper can be made from 100% recycled fibers and whitened without the chemical chlorine, traditionally the primary complaint against it. Still, Cascades says dropping the extra step of bleaching reduces the environmental impact of Moka toilet paper by about 25% compared to their white recycled paper because of energy savings and other benefits…
So far so good. Nothing particularly bad here, right?
Well, this here is where the danger lies:
Even so, Dunkin’ Donuts decided to use recycled brown napkins about three years ago, in part because of what the color “symbolized,” says Scott Murphy, vice president of strategic manufacturing and supply for Dunkin’ Brands. Tests in a handful of restaurants showed the brown napkins made customers “feel like they were doing something good for the environment,” and matched the décor, he says.
Now, Dunkin’ Donuts still made a good decision. It’s great that they are using 100% recycled, non-bleached napkins! But the potentially exploitable thing is knowing what the brown in the brown napkins has come to “symbolize” and that it has the power to make customers “feel” a certain way.
The irony of all ironies in this story comes in the next paragraph:
At least one company adds brown pigments to non-chlorine bleached diapers to drive home the environmental message. The diapers need “visual differentiation,” says Louis Chapdelaine, product director of fibers at Seventh Generation Inc., a Burlington, Vt.- based company that specializes in eco-friendly household cleaning products and paper. It’s important “not so much that it’s brown, it’s that it’s not white,” he says. All diapers, if left undyed, would be the color of raw plastic or semi-translucent, he says.
What?!
Listen, it’s awesome that they aren’t using chlorine bleach to whiten their diapers. But these diapers stink, whether soiled or not, for their obvious attempt at Brownwashing. They could dye these diapers any color at all, so why brown? In fact, considering the unpleasant brown stuff that these diapers typically capture from the babies wearing them, you’d think that beige or brown would be the absolutely last color that Seventh Generation would choose, and this claim by their product director that this is simply a matter of providing “visual differentiation” really rings hollow. They even have a whole webpage dedicated to defending their brown-dyed diapers, though it, too, reads as nothing more than an elaborate rationalization.
Meanwhile, the folks at Babyworks.com and the Mothering Magazine online forum are none too pleased, and I have to say that I’m deeply disappointed in Seventh Generation, a company that has been an originator and a leader in the recycled and eco-friendly product marketplace. It could be that their products are still as eco-friendly as they always have been, but this brown dye thing and the excuses they make for it really has me questioning their integrity for the first time.
Sure, there are worse fish to fry, companies that have made no efforts to offer more renewable/sustainable products, and they won’t be earning a nod from me in my Celebrating Eco-Progress series anytime soon.
Let’s just hope that they don’t take after Seventh Generation and jump on the Brownwashing bandwagon too.
According to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency data for 2009:
I touched on the E-waste problem in a Celebrating Eco-Progress installment in April 2011, Dell was the recipient of my recognition back then, and today I celebrate considerable and welcome efforts by Sprint to address the environmental impacts of their business.
Via SmartPlanet:
For Sprint, it is no longer enough that some mobile phones and handsets have been vetted for the sustainability of their materials and packaging.
Effective Jan. 1, 2012, the company is now subjecting all of the devices it offers on its wireless services to the environmental sustainability certification process that it has developed with UL Environment.
Sprint pioneered this approach with the Samsung Replenish (pictured at the right). The standard…looks at:
- The sensitivity of materials used
- How well the phone manages energy
- The manufacturing process
- Packaging
- The manufacturer’s product stewardship
- How the product is put together from a design standpoint, so it can be fixed or updated more easily
It is the last item on the list that really stands out to me, since it speaks to one of the primary causes for such high disposal rates.
As I wrote in my older post:
Just think about cellphones for a second. From a profit motive standpoint, the two-year contract was a stroke of brilliance, as it has now become almost standard practice for consumers to replace a perfectly good cellphone every two years just because you can do so and get a new phone at a significant discount. Cellphone manufacturers and carriers figured out that the increase in sales volume from such a dynamic would not only compensate for the discounts they offer for upgrades, but would actually stabilize a market with a predictable life cycle.
While I don’t see an end in sight for two-year contracts tied to upgrades, it will be interesting to see if Sprint’s new practices can achieve their lofty goals:
“By being the first carrier to require all wireless phones to go through the UL Environment certification process, we expect to accelerate adoption of this standard throughout the wireless industry,” said David Owens, vice president of product development for Sprint, in a statement about the new policy.
It remains to be seen if customers will eventually, in larger numbers, fix or upgrade their phones rather than replacing them every two years as a result of actions like Sprint’s, but it certainly is worth a shot!
Keep up the good work, Sprint!
My wife and I own an old Toyota Previa van, like the one pictured here, it has over 200,000 miles on it, it squeals loudly driving around town, it hums loudly at highway speeds, it probably needs around $1,000 worth of work right now to keep it truly road worthy, and yet I can’t imagine living without it.
There are very few things that we can’t fit inside it or strap to the roof rack, including this year’s 10-foot Christmas tree, it’s amazingly comfortable on long road trips, and you can sleep in the back in a pinch.
That’s one long-winded scenic route on the way to stressing that the operative letter in SUV is “U” for utility. (For purposes of this blog post, I’m defining Sport Utility Vehicles to include vans, pick-ups and other trucks.)
Back in July 2011, I wrote about the Suzuki Every Van and how it was doomed, because, as an EV (Electric Vehicle) it failed the U Test in a big, big way, offering a pathetic maximum range of 62 miles.
Well, today, via Inhabitat, there’s news from the North American International Auto Show in Detroit, MI, about this:
…Via Motors unveil[ed] the company’s first extended-range electric vehicle, a full-size light duty pickup truck called the eREV VTRUX. [The] 100-mpg VTRUX attempts to replace a full V8 engine with a hugely powerful 402-horsepower electric motor (with 300 lb-ft of torque), a larger version of the same system that allows the Chevy Volt to beat EV range anxiety.
Now, the downside is that, like the Chevy Volt, the VTRUK is NOT a true EV, as Inhabitat mistakenly refers to it. It still utilizes a gasoline engine, hence the “100-mpg” rating, which clearly makes it a hybrid in my eyes.
That said, since SUVs are such notorious gas guzzlers, a 100-mpg pickup is nothing to laugh at, and the fact that Via Motors will also be producing a van and something that looks like a Chevy Suburban, might just win my seal of approval anyway, for how soundly they are winning the U Test.
If we are ever to completely replace gasoline-powered automobiles, automakers MUST make them affordable (who knows how much these Via trucks will cost), and they must pass the U Test. The average family must be able to drive their family members, their dogs, their stuff and their home and garden improvement supplies around, and they have to have good range, especially since charging stations are only just starting to pop up in a relative handful of places.
This is simple, brilliant and inspiring!
At this S.C. coffee shop, everyone pays for everyone else's drinks. Why not do this in your town? su.pr/2ZWEDW—
GOOD (@GOOD) January 10, 2012
