October 12th, 2007 Posted in Business, Ethical/Eco, WTF?

“Green”? Bollocks.

Everyone is jumping on the “green” bandwagon. However, cutting polluting effects of their products by 1% does not give companies the right to splash “GREEN!” all over it. That is such cynical marketing, and misses the point completely.

This leads on to another point about advertising in general. They are professional liars who slant things to make their stuff look better than it is. This sounds obvious, but even being aware of it is not enough to protect me from the barrage of lies that are fired at me every day. I can only pray that people are sharp enough to resist. It is short sighted for advertisers to promise the earth to make people buy things, only for them to realise afterwards that they have been skanked.

Which leads to another point. Why do I care? Commerce requires a constant obsolesence, otherwise companies would sell one perfect item to everyone that wants one, and then go bust due to lack of sales. We don’t need all this “stuff”. What would happen if we all realised that? Serious economic changes, and not for the benefit of shareholder driven companies that need constant expansion. Constant expansion needs a constantly increasing number of people to sell things to. We only have limited space and consumable resources. Where is this leading? Am I taking a too abstract and long term view? Maybe, but that’s the way I think, and I don’t want to play the circular purchase game. And I certainly don’t believe in “Green” air travel, or “Green” cars. They just aren’t green, so stop trying to make us think they are, lying companies.