BEING GREEN – PART 3
In part 2, I highlighted that the first thing to consider when buying green is to exhaust all alternatives to buying at all, especially buying new materials. I’ve realized belatedly that I forgot to include borrowing, renting or sharing in my list of things to consider before buying new or used (mea culpa). If you’re only going to use it a couple of times, why buy when you can rent? If your neighbour has a ladder and is willing to let you borrow it, there’s no need to buy one of your own at all. There is at least one website for the United States, www.NeighborGoods.com, that helps you find people in your neighbourhood willing to rent something out to you or let you borrow it. It’s only a matter of time before more sites like this get developed!

I also explained the benefits of using multi-attribute leadership certifications like EcoLogo, Green Seal, Nordic Swan, and Blue Angel to identify which products and services are truly environmentally preferable. Today I’ll start off with highlighting some of the other great programs out there. There are in fact a few more multi-attribute labels that are specific to certain groups of products and services that are good to know.

The Electronic Product Environment Assessment Tool (EPEAT) certifies computers on a rating scale. Computers with EPEAT Gold are the best of the best, followed by Silver and Bronze.

The LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) and BOMA BESt (the Building Owners and Managers Association of Canada’s Building Environmental Standards) certifications also use rating scales to certify buildings against environmental standards.

Green Key and Green Leaf are two different programs that certify hotels and other travel accommodations based on their environmental practices. The more keys or leaves a facility displays, the better they are.

There’s also plenty more certification programs that certify individual attributes.

ENERGY STAR is probably the most well known. The ENERGY STAR logo indicates that the product is among the most energy-efficient in its class. Speaking of energy, Green-e certification means that renewable energy has been used to produce the product or service.

There are also sustainable forest management certifications for anything made from a tree. Now, let’s be clear, a sustainable forest certification does mean that the forest from which the product comes meets many, many different environmental criteria. The reason I count them as single-attribute certifications is because they do not certify the production process, only the source of the raw materials. So, for example, the wood may be harvested from a forest in such a way as to not cause environmental damage or harm to the people nearby, but there are no guarantees it won’t be transported to a manufacturing plant that excessively pollutes the air and water. Nevertheless, if you can’t find paper or wood products that have been certified by one of the labels discussed in part 2, absolutely look for one that has a sustainable forest management certification! The biggies are the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI).

GreenGuard is a certification program that guarantees the product is better for indoor air quality. Indoor air quality is very important, not only because of air pollution that makes it outdoors eventually, but also for human health. Especially if you are in a green building. Why? A big part of what makes a building “green” is that it is air-tight (i.e. energy efficient). That also means that any off-gassing from furniture and carpets gets trapped in the building longer, exposing everyone in the building to more toxic fumes than usual. This is why measures taken for good indoor air quality count towards getting certification for a green building. Careful though, indoor air quality measures aren’t mandatory for a green building. Being in a green building also means that it’s extra important to avoid using chemicals such as those commonly found in cleaning products that are bad for indoor air quality (look for more environmentally preferred alternatives and reduce use wherever possible).

I think this highlights the problem with looking at only one attribute of the product or service to determine if it’s green. The more classic example was made famous (in the environmental world at least…) by the book Lean Thinking by James Womack and Daniel Jones. They traced the full life cycle of aluminum cans, including extraction of the raw materials, production, transportation, use and disposal. To make a long story short, the environmental impact from the use of aluminum cans is shocking. Aluminum production is the leading cause of perflurocarbon emissions in the U.S., an extremely potent greenhouse gas. Aluminum production also emits a greenhouse gas that’s a precursor to acid rain. As if that’s not enough, in some types of soil, discarded aluminum can lead to water contaminated with aluminum, which is toxic to animals and not so good for humans either. And yet, aluminum is among the most recyclable products we use. Unlike plastic and paper, aluminum can be recycled an infinite number of times and there is no chemical difference between aluminum that has been recycled and virgin aluminum. So if you based your purchasing decisions solely on recycled content and/or recyclability, aluminum would come out on top every time. But if you look at the whole life cycle, it’s the worst. Therefore, we must be careful whenever we start focusing on only one part of the story.

Going back to the indoor air quality issue, notice that thus far in this “being green” series I have only talked about the environment. Human health is often considered in discussions on the environment, but not always. There’s another term out there: sustainable. What does it mean to be sustainable? It means satisfying the needs of the present without sacrificing the needs of the future. There are 3 pillars to sustainability; for something to be considered sustainable it needs to be good for the environment, the economy and society. It needs to balance all three. For example, to be sustainable, we don’t want to run recycling programs on the backs of child labourers in developing nations. That would be bad, not only from an ethical perspective, but from a world view societal perspective. Human health and welfare concerns do tend to fall into the ‘society’ category more than the ‘environment’ category.

Certification labels that help address some of the more social aspects of sustainability include the leaping bunny for animal-cruelty free cosmetics and Certified Fair Trade for products that ensure the growers and their communities are treated humanely. Organisations like Free the Children, who strive to eliminate poverty, are also built off the social sustainability concept.

Buying local is another social sustainability activity. Another new term that’s been floating around is locavore. It means eating only foods that are grown locally. Often people who only buy locally claim to be doing it for environmental reasons. For some things, in some places, in some seasons, this may be a valid argument. However, the true answer is the ever-annoying “it depends” (so common when talking about green buying). There isn’t a black and white answer that works for everything. The reason? The argument for why buying local is better for the environment is that there is less transportation. The thing is, on average, far more emissions, pollutants, etc. are caused by the way it is grown, not the transportation. Think of the fuel that goes into all the farm equipment and the pesticides, etc. that need to be used in greater quantities in climates that are less suited to it, let alone the energy costs of growing produce in greenhouses or raising animals in colder climates. All that adds up much more than the impacts of transportation in many cases. Read the 100-mile myth if you’re not convinced. Buying local is still good because it supports the local economy (that’s the social pillar) and it also often tastes better. I happen to think produce that was ripe when picked and that doesn’t have a long wait between the field and my stomach must also be healthier for me, but last I checked the experts were still in debate over that issue. Either way, if you’re serious about your diet being better for the environment and not just the community and yourself, what you should be looking into instead is buying organic food and eating seasonally.

Being green and sustainable is one of those things where reading about it is not enough, you have to start living it. Base what you do on what’s really important to you. For instance, I base my buying decisions first and foremost on my health and the health of people I care about it. Cost plays a big role too, of course, but I’m willing to pay more for something that will be better for me and my loved ones. To be honest, my main motivation for caring about the health of the environment is that I see how it impacts us. Health Canada has done some interesting research on the health effects of climate change in fact, in case anyone else in interested in that side of things.

Makeup to me is a great illustration of this way of thinking. Did you know that your lipstick may contain lead? Or that there can be formaldehyde in nail polish? Or that many of the fragrances used in personal care products are made from petroleum? There may even be traces of arsenic and mercury in that cosmetic you’re using. Did you know these ingredients get absorbed through the skin (or, in the case of lipstick, ingested)? Besides lip balm, I don’t wear makeup. At first, this wasn’t the primary reason, I just felt makeup was silly. Very rarely do I see someone who has actually done their makeup well enough to look better with the makeup than without, in my opinion. So my initial reason was “if I can’t or won’t commit to learning to do this fantastically, I’d rather not do it at all.” Now that I’ve heard more about the nasty ingredients in makeup, I just can’t get my mind around putting any of it on my skin. If I won’t eat it, I don’t want it on my skin. I’m aware that there are now limited organic lines out there that don’t contain all the nasties, but you know what? After living so long without it, why start now? I don’t feel I need it and there’s freedom in that for me. An extra bonus is that it’s one less non-necessity for me to spend money on and it’s less processed products that I’m responsible for buying (and am therefore not responsible for the environmental impacts of its production, distribution, use and disposal). So I figure it’s good all around that I don’t wear makeup! I still feel enormous social pressure to wear makeup, but I refuse to give into it.

The point is we may all have different core reasons for living our lives the way we do. Some of our lifestyle choices may be having unintended impacts on the environment, the economy and society. They may be positive impacts, but if you’re living a typical North American lifestyle, it’s more likely there are negative impacts that have gone unacknowledged. Despite our many varied reasons for trying to be more environmentally conscious and/or sustainable, I hope we can find some common ground to collectively influence change.

Margaret Bailey lives in Ottawa with her husband and two cats. She believes strongly that knowledge is only useful if applied and shared. She strives to be a light to all who cross her path or walk with her awhile.