One of the key areas I'm focusing on with this humble green building blog is tracing the movement of green building toward the mainstream. There are all kinds of interesting little pockets to be explored here, mostly of the cultural sort. And that makes reading about green building, and about the innovation and technological development happening right now, a pretty fertile subject. Yet as much as there is to be encouraged about in green building, there is always a devil's advocate position … [Read more...]
NWFA’s Gate-to-Gate is Short Life Cycle in Forest Products
October 9, 2008 By Leave a Comment
Following the National Wood Flooring Association’s promise to deliver a life cycle assessment of hardwood flooring, and leading consumers to believe that this would be a cradle to grave assessment, the NWFA sponsored a report that was not anywhere near what its title implied. The “Life Cycle Inventory of Solid Strip Hardwood Flooring in the Northeastern United States”, produced by the Consortium for Research for Renewal Industrial Materials (CORRIM), was conducted by a reputable group … [Read more...]
NWFA Press Releases: Examples of Hype in Enviromental Claims
October 9, 2008 By Leave a Comment
The National Wood Flooring Association (NWFA) likes to issue press releases with headlines like the following: Real Wood Floors: Wood Flooring is Green (March 14, 2008) Wood Floors Are Green (June 13, 2008) Of course, the NWFA is in the business of promoting wood flooring, so one might expect a little spin on the environmental benefits of their product. However, this is an age of sophisticated consumers and the NWFA would be well advised to tone down its rhetoric and put some … [Read more...]
NWFA Greenwashing Gives Industry Bad Name
October 2, 2008 By Leave a Comment
The National Wood Flooring Association’s green marketing effort is one of the most notorious examples of greenwashing in the building materials industry. The association’s specious and risible arguments, unashamedly made in press releases that should make any self-respecting news editor shudder at the obvious hype, do as much to harm responsible environmental marketing as would flat out lying. It’s truly a sad state of affairs for the wood flooring industry. There are sound and eminently … [Read more...]
FTC Green Guides similar to Canadian Guidelines
September 25, 2008 By Leave a Comment
It’s doubtless no mere coincidence that both the United States and Canada are conducting a review of their respective environmental marketing guidelines in the same year. There are striking similarities in the two proposed documents, and with the level of commercial integration of the two countries, it makes good sense to seek similar standards in consumer protection, particularly in the hot topic of green marketing. Both reviews are under the jurisdiction of federal agencies with similar mandates … [Read more...]
FTC Green Guides: US Advertisers Raise Caution
September 9, 2008 By Leave a Comment
Despite the fact that the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) began a public process this year for revising its guidelines on environmental marketing claims, the issue has not had a high public profile. I’ll therefore attempt to remedy this misfortune by including the topic here in my vastly read blog. And since I have already critiqued some prickly points in the similar – though certainly not identical – Canadian guide, it would be unfair if I didn’t have a go at the American one as well. … [Read more...]
Life Cycle Calculators: A Good Green “Idea”
September 4, 2008 By Leave a Comment
The sudden greening of many industries – whether optics or reality – is creating an urgent demand for quick fixes to complex problems. One such need is for life cycle assessment tools, some of which have sprung into existence almost overnight. Others have been under development since the pre-commercial stage of today’s mushrooming environmentalism. This is especially true in the building materials industry where product life cycle calculators look like they might soon challenge the materials … [Read more...]
Plus 14021 – Environmental Claims: A Guide for industry and advertisers
August 28, 2008 By Leave a Comment
Canada’s new guide for environmental marketing claims (Plus 14021 – Environmental Claims: A guide for industry and advertisers) could prove to be an iron fist in a velvet glove. From an environmental point of view, this may be seen a good thing. The advertising industry has shamelessly permitted – worse, promoted – the proliferation of every imaginable green claim for pretty much every product in the marketplace. Its inability, or lack of desire, to self-regulate in this respect has created … [Read more...]
The Language of Green & Canadian Green Marketing Guidelines
August 26, 2008 By Leave a Comment
This just in… My preceding post about “greenwashing” definitions omitted an important American source, Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition (2008). It’s important because it’s generally regarded as a solid authority on American usage, and in this particular case because it includes an etymology of greenwashing – one which is surprising, if not shocking. Like most people I know, I had assumed the word was a combination of “green” referring to environmental … [Read more...]
Dictionaries Differ on Greenwashing
August 22, 2008 By Leave a Comment
There are subtle but significant differences in some dictionary definitions of “greenwash.” Although it’s a relatively new word – appearing for the first time within the last six years in major English dictionaries – you’d have to be a language ostrich not to know it has something to do with specious claims about protecting the environment. But what precisely is going on in the minds of people who recognize a greenwash? I selected a small sample of dictionaries with distinctive national … [Read more...]
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