et in business, it has always meant making sure that the decisions that are being made will "hold up" and be relevant in the long term.When you look at the "green" sustainability movement, I'm wondering how many of the corporate and government decisions that are being made will actually stand this test of time. Because you see, from my perspective, many of the decisions that are being made (and note this is my opinion only) with the emphasis on how much of a media splash can you get so that everyone looks with adoration on the green halo above your head.
So a few examples. Yesterday, with great fanfare the Premier of Ontario announced that beginni
ng in July 2010 the provincial government will provide a rebate of upwards of $10000 to anyone purchasing an electric car. Yet from my perspective, although getting a great deal of media coverage, I'm thinking why? Firstly, this is obviously a rebate for those who can afford a vehicle which will cost upwards of $40K, leaving out a significant part of the population who cannot partake of the premier's generosity. However, I thought and maybe I'm naive here is that the idea was to get more vehicles off the roads, because in Toronto as well as cities around the globe do not have the infrastructure to support more vehicles. So if there are programs to buy more cars - even if environmentally friendly - that means that more roads need to be build, meaning that all those non-environmentally friendly dump trucks, bulldozers and the like need to be used, and the wonderful aromas of tar and fresh asphalt wing their way into the stratosphere.The cost of this program is potentially of $3Billion -- so I ask myself, why wouldn't we try to put this money into public transportation systems that span effectively out to suburbs of major cities? I would love to have take the commuter trains into the city, but because of their unreliability and minimal service in my corridor, I don't.
So I'm just wondering how this "green" program is actually helping the environment.
What else? Plastic bags. Please let me start this by saying I'm in favor of bringing my own bags. This has been a standard in Europe for years and truly it only makes sense. However, the big fanfare of saving the environment because of reduced use of plastic bags? The CEO of one of the major food retailers in Canada is the TV pitch man for this firms environmental push. The stuff that they are focusing on are the easy, big media splash elements. And they are doing this while continually buying more and more of their goods from China, where environmental standards to say the least are lax and furthermore, there is a significant amount of pollution generated by the transportation of these products ( I won't get into the health aspects but I'm sure most have read about the cautionary tales about products from China). Furthermore, shouldn't they be looking at their shelves and the massive amount of unnecessary packaging that they allow t
heir suppliers to put their products in? To "trick" consumers into thinking they are getting more bang for their buck, they put small quantities into huge boxes -- the packaging could easily be taken down in many cases by half -- that would have a significant impact on the environment. Yet this type of approach -- although long term i.e. sustainable -- would not create the type of media splash -- because it would mostly be done behind the scenes, away from the spotlight.So when corporations and governments get on their high horse and talk about caring about the environment -- look beyond the media hype and see if they really care or are they just enjoying the photo-op.
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There's nothing quite as depressing as watching a white plastic grocery store bag, dancing on the wind through the wilderness or flapping endlessly, trapped thirty feet high in the branches of a hundred year old tree, knowing it might still be there, flapping away next year and the year after that and who knows how many years until Gaea finally sends a truly cleansing, hurricane force wind.
Going Green is one of those areas where capitalism never seems to function quite the way you might wish it would function. For instance, our local grocery store has come up with a scheme we ought to have been able to predict but didn't.
Here's how it works. You put up a sign in front of the store, advising people they should purchase a cloth bag from the store and bring it back every time they shop. This is obviously good for the environment but it's also good for the store because they get to sell the cloth bags and they don't have to purchase and include a bunch of plastic bags as part of the price of the goods purchased.
Of course, by the time you read the sign, you've already either remembered your cloth bags or forgotten them. If you remembered them, fine. If you forgot them, you have to drive home to get them, then drive back to the store. Hmmmm. How green is that, I wonder?
If you don't have a cloth bag with you or you don't want to buy cloth bags, they'll gladly sell you the old plastic bags that used to be free for 10 cents each.
The first time I casually wandered into the grocery store without my cloth bags, which I've been using for years, I asked for a paper bag instead of a plastic bag. Sorry, no such thing. You must purchase formerly included plastic bags.
So much for Green, huh? Both the cloth bags and the plastic bags are profit centers now.
Biodegradable paper? I guess the profit margin isn't big enough or people might prefer them to the cloth bags and expect them to be included in the price of the goods. It's too bad. The paper mill in town that employed most of the population just closed down forever.
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