KEY POINTS:
When did people become cynical about being green? At what tipping point did green marketing take over the world and make it desirable for every manufacturer to promote themselves as saving the planet, despite the fact they are over packaged, have used oodles of carbon miles, have dodgy
ingredients and no ethical credentials?
I preferred the days when being green meant your friends regarded you as a bit eccentric. When the fact that you had a compost bin and recycled your waste meant you were obviously brought up in a cult in Nelson and suffer from embarrassing secretions of patchouli oil.
When you astounded people by producing organic salads from your garden, complete with the stray bug or two, and raised eyebrows when you lugged your bath water out the back for the lemon tree.
When making your own laundry detergent was cause for much humour at a ladies' lunch, and the mention of washing cloth sanitary pads would make an entire room of women swoon with nausea.
It wasn't easy being green, but you knew what you were doing.
I have become accustomed to cosmetic companies throwing herbs and nuts around on their packaging, with words like "botanicals" and "marine" to give the impression they are a natural product, despite listing in their ingredients methyl, propyl, butyl and ethyl paraben - synthetic preservatives which are toxic - mineral and petroleum oils, the controversial and carcinogenic sodium laurel sulphate, and a bit of a synthetic fragrance and artificial colouring to top it off.
I'm not surprised that food is increasingly packaged in whole-earth designs to give the impression that it is good for you because it was made somewhere homely and cosy, rather than where it is made - in huge factories in the industrial wastelands. Words such as "natural", "barn-laid" and "pesticide-free" don't fool me for a minute, and just because a food is "sugar-free" doesn't mean it's better for you, it just has loads of artificial sweetener instead.
All these things I can deal with, but only because I've read many books on ethical living and know what to look for.
What I can't deal with is people looking to catch a glint of green on their brand. The much-publicised Trelise Cooper pink eco bag's ethical intentions are dented when you find it is made in China (carbon miles, cheap labour) and manufactured out of 100 per cent polypropylene (non-renewable resource, energy-intensive processing).
I like Trelise, her clothes are great, but what part of green marketing does she think I'm not going to see through?
Her efforts to save the planet are about as useful as filling my compost bin with bits of polystyrene, or planting my garden with plastic flowers.
If she supported a collective of women in northwest India whose fine embroidery skills make dolls sold on fair trade principles, we might get that cool, green feeling. Allowing 4000 women to break out of subsistence living is a nice fit for a fashion designer, and very green is the new black.
Or perhaps someone should point out that when it comes to landfill waste, 0.3 per cent is from plastic bags, and 40 per cent is organic waste. Now, a Trelise Cooper compost bin I could use.
With the emergence of green marketing we must work harder to decipher what is real and what is simply a product looking to claim environment-friendly status. There are no standards about what constitutes "green", nor are there rules or regulations governing claims, apart from the word "organic" needing to be certified.
But the rest is a minefield solved only by someone with a degree in label interpretation and a thorough working knowledge of green issues. Which is a shame, because most Kiwis are interested in ethical issues, even if they're not sure what they mean.
They'll happily change to an eco-friendly lightbulb, consider a compost bin and reduce waste, but they need information, not confusion. The risk is that many people will ignore green marketing because they no longer trust it and those genuine producers who are making an effort to bring us ethical products will lose out.
