i would not eat it on a train, i would not eat it on a plane.

The words “green” and “sustainability” have been thrown around a lot recently The major television networks hosted a series of green weeks in which they changed their logos to a green hue and gave various energy saving tips; Chevrolet and Ford each have their own green ad campaigns touting their latest hybrids and energy saving concept cars; and even BP, the worlds third largest private oil company changed their acronym from British Petroleum to Beyond Petroleum along with a slew of television, radio, and print advertisements touting their funding of alternative energy and more efficient oil extraction.

But what exactly does this all mean and more importantly what does all of this really do? Most people and organizations really have no clue what being green or sustainable means; these two words have been manipulated into nothing more than public relation buzzwords that feign caring, awareness, and concern but in reality do little more than sell compact fluorescent light bulbs and single ply toilet paper. Making your logo green does not mean that your company is actually living up to that idea. Bragging about cars that get 30 miles to the gallon does not alleviate the strain that petroleum-based engines put on the environment and the economy.

The problem rests with one fundamental assumption about sustainability and green living: Americans want to have their cheeseburgers, and they want them to be green too. I am not saying you cannot have a great grass-fed organic all beef patty topped with organic cheese in-between a lightly toasted organic seven-grain bun—you can, and should, they are delicious. What I am saying is that this delectable organic burger is most likely not sustainable. Did the beef, cheese, and bun come from a massive organic meat and produce factory 300 miles away or a local farmers market or butcher? How did you get to the store to purchase these, drive, walk, or bike? What did you use to carry these ingredients home, in what containers are they stored? Even in the best of circumstances I know that I personally fail in at least one of those categories with almost every meal I consume and for many Americans, its not even possible for them to consume a sustainable meal because they either do not know how, or care, or don’t have any other options but to purchase food from a grocery store that’s fifteen miles away.

I recently was speaking with a gentleman who had come back from building homes in rural Egypt for half a decade. He was baffled by the fact that one could become a “sustainability expert.” He quipped that he worked with sustainable experts for the past five years who couldn’t read or write; each of these experts used locally abundant building materials, left little to no waste after construction, and the houses they built required no fossil fuels to heat, cool or light them. He was, of course, referring to the mud brick homes surrounding the outskirts of Cairo and Alexandria.

What he said made me take pause and helped me come to this realization: Sustainability by itself is not particularly difficult to achieve, mankind has hundreds of thousands of years experience doing it. The challenge is making modern comforts and systems sustainable. It is taking a seemingly endless amount of linear systems of production, services, and industry and making them cyclical. Instead of creating waste, they feed the system. Americans want to keep the trappings of our society within the context of something that is attainable and easily done.  They want their green cheeseburger but they want it cheap and they want it now.  These Americans should keep something in mind:  It’s not the planet they should be trying to save with their green cheeseburger it’s themselves.  The planet doesn’t need our help it will be spinning for the next billion years.  Humanity however, will be lucky to last for the next hundred if it doesn’t start implementing sustainable systems now.  I can see no greater challenge for our species and I wish to dedicate my life to it.  

I was listening to NPR’s Talk of the Nation the other day (yes a middle class white hippy listened to NPR, shocking) and there were a couple of ladies complaining that being green is too expensive and really just a moral luxury for the suburban rich and out of reach for those in the inner cities.  A part of me can see what they’re saying I can’t afford a Prius, shop at Whole Foods, or to install solar panels on my roof either.  But I think “being green” is really more about the things that you don’t do and the things you don’t buy rather than the things that you do.  For example, it’s sure as hell greener to not own a Prius at all, to not buy biodegradable bottled water, and to not use plastic or paper when you get your groceries (whether or not the contents are organic).  

So, instead of saying that being green is too expensive and a only for the rich I would argue that its really only the trendy green stuff that’s out of the hands of the poor (like this $200 earth composter) while abstaining from doing things that harm the environment is free and in some cases saves you money.  According to CNN, city dwellers on average produce fourteen percent less carbon waste than their suburban counterparts by virtue of NOT having cars and NOT living in an abundance of square-footage and the poor, in general, produce MUCH less waste than the well-to-do.  How many of you have to fuel four jet-skis, a fleet of cars, and your own jet?  I know I do, but I use biodiesel for my lambo.    

So, lady from NPR whining about how green is beyond the reach of poor city dwellers stop your complaining and stop doing something.

Thing I’m wrong or just an ass?  Say so below.  I would appreciate it.

So what the heck is sustainability anyway?  It’s been thrown around a lot lately.  Sustainable business, agriculture, finance, design, living, and energy are all part of one giant concept called sustainability.   For most marketers, I think they generally think sustainability is just another way of saying more efficient. 

Ultimately, the problem with most products isn’t that they aren’t efficient enough.  It’s that they exist on a linear system of extraction, production, distribution, consumption, and disposal that kind of looks like this:

TYPICAL LINEAR SYSTEM OF PRODUCTION

(click on it to see all the fun stuff thats too small to see in this big thumbnail)

In this model, we take things out of the earth, sell them, consume them, and then dump them somewhere where it sits, in many cases, for millions of years.  The problem is that the earth is finite and if you don’t put things back into the earth, you’ve got a finite existence.  A really great site to visit to get the full picture of exactly where our stuff comes from is www.storyofstuff.com.   

            So what’s the alternative to a linear-we-all-gonna-die-if-we-don’t-change-system?  It’s a cyclical system that doesn’t end at the dump, but starts all over again.  I suppose some of you are saying to yourself “Okay what magic universe does stuff you consume go back into the ground and help create more stuff?  I mean, there aint no iPod tree!”  Although it may be true that there is no iPod tree we still have a lot to learn from nature (the greatest cyclical system ever) and apply its lessons to how we do business, build homes, create energy, and have fun. 

I sure as hell don’t have all the answers on how to do all this but I see this as mankind’s greatest challenge and is why I built this site.  This is a place for people to share thoughts, voice opinions, and help change the world one post at a time.  So, please help.  Send me your ideas, comment below, and maybe just maybe we’ll live to see the iPod tree.