Environmentally Friendly

Socially Responsible, Ethical, Natural, Sustainable

Ah the buzz words abound, but what do they really mean?

I hate the part of my work that sounds like I exist in a fairy tale version of reality. The socially responsible investing crowd is generally pretty in touch with the financial realities of the stock (and bond) market, but people certainly aren't immune to the idealism that can accompany such lofty goals. On the other hand, it's a business, and it must be run like one--and businesses, when sustainable, are self-serving to a degree. As people at my company like to say: There are no responsible companies, just responsible investors.

The opposite feeling is also true however. Do you believe a label that says "natural" or "environmentally friendly"? What is that? Companies have realized that this is appealing to consumers and they have pasted the phrases and labels meant for truly innovative products on anything they can get away with. Luckily, there are some regulations on words like this. For example, there are USDA guidelines for Organic foods, but some would say these are not strong enough. In addition, the USDA will soon be under pressure from Wal-mart and other companies to relax those standards in order to more easily mass produce this type of agriculture. Unfortunately, mass production is one of the problems. It is a double-edged sword that Wal-mart now wants to make itself the most "green" company in the world. Their record shows that they water down and cheapen everything they come into contact with. Organics are riddled with problems including the idea that it is necessarily local agriculture, when it's not, and the problem with packaging things in tons of plastic in order to avoid using preservatives. This post was not meant to wax on about organics in particular. If you're interested, you can learn more about it here.

This sort of weakening of the words we use to indicate a low-impact product on resources is probably the reason for my distaste for what my industry appears to be on the surface, my hesitation to use such classifications, and my distrust for the labels. So I guess we can just blame it all on Wal-mart after all. Now we're happy.