Why the term “green” is nonsense.

I’m going to get straight to the point with this one.  Things can not be described as “green” or “not green”.

Everything has an impact, no matter how eco-friendly it is trying to be.  The alternative phrase might be “greener”, but then this falls foul of nothing to compare it to.  There has to be a reference “thing” for the new “greener thing” so it can be “greener” than the reference “thing”.

This is semantic, yes.  But what else is there? The words we use are all we have to try and get our meanings across – it’s no good saying “yeah, but you know what I mean”.  That’s lazy.  So to make “green” actually mean something, there has to be a comparison. To get numbers to compare two items, the impact of designing, making, transporting, using and decommissioning the item must be taken into account.  This could well be very difficult.  Difficulty is no excuse for giving up, however.

Thoughts on a postcard, please 🙂

Nick

2 thoughts on “Why the term “green” is nonsense.

  1. RickNunn
    October 3, 2008
  2. Ferret
    October 3, 2008

    LOL – how is that layout “environmentally friendly”? Am I the only person getting fucked off with shitty tutorials? And why does everyone use Photoshop for web layouts?

    I used to think I had to use Photoshop for everything, but you showed me the way with Fireworks Mr Nunn 🙂

Comments are closed.