You may have noticed recently that the media generally has leapt on the green bandwagon with a vengeance, everything from catchy green headlines to green-coloured type, or should that be hype?
It’s become an easy way to describe a whole host of environmental problems, solutions and ideas for living, but it’s also an easy way to sell newspapers and magazines and it’s fast becoming a ‘trendy’ topic.
Here is what Colin Butfield, Head of Campaigns at WWF, has to say on the subject: “It is vital that green living is not treated as a trend that comes and goes, but that it becomes part of the way we live.”

Part of the solution
or the problem?
The media, especially the print, loves using pithy, eye-catching, blanket key words.
Because it’s sufficiently vague, “green” can be applied to seemingly disparate topics, anything from cleaning up a power plant to recycling your old bathwater, anything, in fact, that might grab the attention of the newly enlightened ‘green crusader’ and sell newspapers.
Only one drawback, the print media is actually contributing to the problem: If we recycled all of the newspapers printed in the US on a typical Sunday, we would save 550,000 trees -- or about 26 million trees per year. California Department of Conservation.
And speaking of paper of a different kind, did you know - if every household in the US replaced just one roll of 1,000 sheet virgin fiber bathroom tissues with 100% recycled ones, we could save: 373,000 trees, 1.48 million cubic feet of landfill space, and 155 million gallons of water? Seventh Generation Co.
While we’ve conveniently strayed to the sub-topic of water usage, here are a few more interesting stats for your consideration:
l The average US household uses more than 22,000 gallons of water per year just for showers and baths. Center for a New American Dream, 2003
l A faucet that drips once each second can waste more than eight gallons of water per day and over 3150 gallons per year. American Water Works Association, 2003
l Daily indoor per capita water use in the typical single-family home with no water-conserving fixtures is 74 gallons. American Water Works Association, 2003
The power to influence or not, as the case may be
Then the media, being the self-appointed mass opinion leader, can highlight an issue at will, so giving it gravitas and equally just as quickly take it out of the limelight and likewise out of the public consciousness.
So much so that one cynic had the nerve to say that most of us have no real opinions of our own, our opinions are merely the reflection of the last article or book we’ve read, or the last TV programme or film seen, lasting as long as a proverbial will-o’-the-wisp.
Take the magazine Vanity Fair, for instance, for the past three years, the monthly glossy has made a point of dedicating its May issue to environmental issues, but this May it switched its dedication to the recession, instead.
Condé Nast, publisher of Vanity Fair, argues that the environment has become so integral to the news agenda that there is no longer a need for a dedicated issue.
It’s not the only media representative that has recently downgraded environmental issues, either.
Research firm TNS Media Intelligence’s recent findings are that UK newspaper coverage of environmental issues, including climate change, global warming, green consumerism and sustainability, actually fell by 27 per cent in 2008.
The heavyweight critics are not exactly ecstatic about this trend. Andy Atkins, Executive Director of Friends of the Earth, had this to say: “Reducing the coverage of green issues would be extremely disappointing.
“The media has a vital role to play in the efforts to prevent catastrophic climate change – we need accurate and incisive reporting to press for real environmental solutions and to expose the ineffectiveness of phoney fixes such as carbon offsetting.”
As for substituting economic woes for green issues, Zac Goldsmith, a former editor of The Ecologist and prospective Tory MP, was rather indignant, saying: “The recession makes the environmental cause more, not less, relevant.
“We can emerge from this recession with a green economy where green choices currently available only to the wealthy become available to everyone.”
Using sex to highlight
green issues
Maybe the real reason Vanity Fair dropped green issues was because it wasn’t sufficiently fashionable or in modern parlance, ‘sexy enough’; a phrase currently applied to just about everything.
To return to symbolic raw sex for an instant, we all know how you can’t sell flash motors without draping at least one scantily clad delectable across the bonnet, and wasn’t that just what Vanity Fair was doing in principle with its last May’s ‘Madonna’ cover?
But then again is it so wrong to draw attention to green issues by playing on the sexy photographic angle, especially considering the old adage a picture is worth a 1,000 words?
See how effective the pictures on these pages are for promoting vegetarianism, not wearing fur, not using a car, and being a female eco-warrior.
Some may consider it degrading the issue, but I’m all for it if it gets the point across!

Greenwashing
Some companies appear more interested in making green ($) than actually being green.
Since the green campaign has grown in popularity, those companies are starting to incorporate ‘greenwash’ (manipulating information so a product appears far more eco-friendly than it actually is) in advertising their products to make them more attractive to turned-on shoppers, and the media seems to be hand in glove with these eco-bandits.
Take hybrid vehicles, for instance, which are being marketed in the media under the green label as they apparently cut greenhouse gas emissions by 33 per cent in comparison to gas-guzzlers.
That may well be true, but consider the energy expended in actually making a hybrid vehicle. To make a hybrid Toyota Prius (or a normal petrol-driven car) 113 million BTUs of energy are used -- that’s equal to 3,785 litres of petrol [source: Wired]. Speaking of petrol, not all hybrids compare favourably with their petrol-fuelled cousins, some of which have smaller carbon footprints.
Some large hybrid SUVs and trucks, for example, may well be made with hybrid technologies, but their fuel-consumption doesn’t compare with some of the conventional fuel-efficient cars on the market.
A petrol-only Honda Fit achieves 33 mpg compared to the 27 mpg of a hybrid Toyota Highlander. Granted these two vehicles aren’t exactly comparable size-wise, but it all depends on your vehicle usage and how many people you generally carry. Perhaps it’s time to consider swapping your four-wheel drive for 4 bicycles, thus saving 725 kgs of CO2 annually.

Turning the Thai
mind-set round
Not an easy option, granted, but oh so necessary. The Emerald Insight Magazine has been conducting some market research in Bangkok on behalf of The Body Shop, and a local company, Oriental Princess, which have employed green marketing strategies to build their customer base in the Thai market. This research indicates that that the two companies have made honest attempts to adopt green marketing strategies, only one minor problem: Thai customers consider non-green attributes more important in making their purchasing decisions.
If the Thais won’t do it for themselves, then perhaps they can be coerced with a little help from Western friends. Reported in The Nation recently was an article on the eco-friendliness of Ericsson Telecom instituting its global green policy in Thailand. Ericsson (Thailand)’s president Hans O Karlsson is quoted as saying “the move was part of the company’s global strategy of offering a combination of energy-efficient products and an emphasis on network energy optimisation to help telecom operators to develop affordable and sustainable communications services in emerging countries ... its three-step process to achieve energy-efficient communications systems includes energy-optimised networks, site optimisation and alternative energy sources”. Another aspect of Ericsson’s green policy is the minimising of energy consumption and e-waste by developing technology to maximise product life cycles, particularly mobile phones. Just as well considering this little fact: Within three years, Americans will be throwing away 130 million mobile phones annually, amounting to 65,000 tons of waste. This waste contains toxic chemicals such as arsenic, beryllium, copper, lead, cadmium, nickel, and zinc. These chemicals have been linked to cancer and neurological disorders. University of Colorado Recycling, 2003

Sustainable clubbing
Reported in the eco-friendly Dutch media is the imminent opening of Club Double Dee, which claims to be the world’s first sustainable dance club. To be located in Rotterdam, this is a co-operative enterprise between Enviu, an international organisation promoting sustainable entrepreneurship; Doll Lab, a Dutch architecture firm; and Off Corso, a local dance club.
Not only will Double Dee be serving organic beer and employing a rainwater collection system for its toilets, but the club is to be powered by dancing, with under-floor springs capturing motion energy, which is then converted into electricity.
Enviu is promoting the advent of Club Double Dee as “the beginning of a new era; an era in which sustainability will be hip and trendy.”
Speaking of eco-trendiness, I think this is where I came in, so I’ll sign off. Ω