A SHORT COURSE IN ECO-SPEAK
The Green Consumer movement has sprouted its share of confusing terminology and vague phrases, often misused by advertisers and marketers. Many have no legal definition; in fact, few experts agree on what they mean. Here are a few phrases to watch out for when shopping:
* Degradable, Biodegradable, Photodegradable: Technically, everything degrades eventually, even if it takes thousands of years. But landfills, where most of our trash ends up, tend to preserve throwaway plastics and paper better than they dispose of them. These terms aren’t any more meaningful when referring to cleaning products. There is little agreement among scientists about how quickly or how thoroughly an ingredient must break down in water before it can be called “biodegradable.”
* Green: This means nothing by itself: It is a relative term that can have many, many meanings. When used as a marketing or labeling term, it has no more meaning than any other color of the rainbow.
* Natural: A widely overused and abused phrase with little meaning. There are many “natural” ingredients--lead, for example--that are extremely poisonous.
* Nontoxic: Again, no legal definition. Substances that are not poisonous to people may be poisonous to plants, animals, insects or bacteria in the soil.
* Ozone-friendly; Won’t Harm the Ozone Layer: This usually indicates that a product is made without ozone-destroying chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). But that doesn’t make a product environmentally benign. Foam coffee cups, for example, may no longer be made with CFCs, but they are still wasteful. Most aerosol products don’t use CFCs either, but they contain other environmentally harmful ingredients.
* Recyclable: Lots of things can be recycled, but not everyone can recycle them. Something is “recyclable” only if you can--and will--recycle it in your community. If you don’t have the ability or don’t bother, a “recyclable” package or product is no better than an “unrecyclable” one.
* Recycled: Some “recycled” paper contains only 5% or 10% recycled content, and other products have 100% recycled content. There is also a difference between “post-consumer” recycled waste (recycled by consumers after use, like newspapers or soft drink cans) and “pre-consumer” recycled waste (reused by the manufacturer, like paper scraps at newspaper printing plants or misshapen cans at bottling plants). The key goal is to increase post-consumer recycled content.
* Environmentally Safe; Safe for the Environment: Nothing is safe for the environment; everything has some environmental impact.
