Saturday, May 22, 2010

How much Green do we need to become?

Green has a become buzz word with everyone talking or doing something about it. Business have started printing Sustainability Reports to show their commitment towards environment and green. So much that some people from my personal circle have quit jobs and have become social entrepreneurs of green activities. Really inspiring.
And above all, there are so many seminars, webinars, podcasts available on green that one cannot be ignorant about our climate and planet. However, what is most interesting to see is that any session you attend on Environment, Green Change, Water prevention etc., there would be a high chance of one speaker who would give example of having bath with one bucket of water or has switched to conventional methods of living. And I have a serious problem with such kind of unwordly remarks. What do they want/expect from common man?
  • Do they expect us to go back to medival period?
  • Do they expect us to think so much green that even while buying basic commodities of home one should look for carbon footprint?
  • Do they mean that world which was becoming flat sometime back is getting territorial again? With the fact that buy local to go green and reduce one's carbon footprint.
  • Do they expect us that anything with label green is the right choice irrespective of other important parameters to me as an individual?

and so on. The point I am trying to make here is that people should be made aware becuase that is in the common interest for our planet. We have to go green. Period. But how? Has anyone got any clear view on that. There are various means and roles each country and individual needs to play here.

Reduce carbon footprints means what? I have not been able to comprehend the right definition still. Yes, I have read the official definition but when it comes to buying products the one needs to know carbon footprint also covers the emissions from the source. Now, if I am sourcing from China because it gives me manufacturing and product pricing advantage. Shall I not go for it? Purelybecuase it involves the mode of goods transport i.e. air is causing more emissions that does not mean I should start buy locally. There are certain business challenges like speed to market, pricing, quality and service which come into play while a product is being produced.

Basic point: If I am not going to be in business and make profits, will green really matter ?

Yes, I am in agreement that we should be "responsible" and must consider impact on the environment while doing our daily jobs in life. However, just we being responsible will not help becuase we need to use the technology to our advantage to reduce the impact further. We have left behind medival period centuries ago so why quote such examples.

For example : I read about this washing machine which would use just one glass of water and one spoon of powder to wash all the clothes (http://www.xerosltd.com/). Now that's technology in use & behaving responsibly.

Another example: Grohe has come out with showers with Eco-Button which reduce water usage upto 40% (http://www.grome.com/). Not only this they have whole lot of bathroom accessories which can help save water and thus enable us to become more repsonsibly. Rather than asking us to start taking bath with one bucket of water !!!

There are some printing of paper setting which one can see in offices like double sided printing. Absolutely makes sense. Infact, I was reading some days back about some special fonts to be preferred as they use less ink while printing. Another invention in this area is the "Eco-Fonts" (http://www.ecofonts.com/). Awesome ! Mind Blowing !

Having said all this what I have realised is that we need to go green because it is the question of our survival and future of next generations. But we also have to use our common sense as well not just driven by labels proclaiming green and some NGOs coming in with big sponsors to advocate the same.