Green Posers (Part 1 of 3)

Business has figured out that there is green in going green. There are a plethora of new products and services that have flooded the market with a desire to capitalize on the new environmentally conscience public. In a lot of cases these products and services represent the best of what industry and technology has to offer. They are sincere in their efforts and offer a win: win to the public. The public gets an environmentally sensitive product and the company gets profits. However, there are posers; those companies/industries that are focused on the color of money green and will put the public and the environment at risk regardless. The Artificial Turf Industry is a very good example of this frightening aspect of the green movement. Their product couldn’t be farther from being green, yet it is being marketed and accepted by many as being ecologically beneficial. But, in fact every square foot of this product that is installed outdoors and exposed to sunlight is an environmental time bomb; more on that later.

Win: Win or Win: Lose Green Economics
General Electric grossed 10 Billion dollars last year in their Eco-Imagination product line alone and they are projecting 20 Billion in 2010. They had previously committed 1.5 billion dollars in research for green products. Why? Because there is Green in going Green…and they can feel good about it too! What a concept! Make money hand over fist and create a better environment. Talk about Win, Win! They have done the research and produced products that save on energy and are produced with environmentally sound practices.
General Electric is not the only one that has rushed to market with green products and services. Many have rushed to market hawking their green products and services because they have found that the public is anxious to find and use them. In fact the public is not only anxious to use these products, they are demanding them. The public is saying “go green or go home” and the corporate world is responding. The reasons for this are pretty self explanatory really and not the point of this article. The point of this article is while there is “Green in going Green” some goods and services coming to market are only one color green…and that is the color of money and profit. They provide no green environmental benefit to the public, no environmental fix but they are instead, cleverly disguised ways to profit from a public that is ardent in their desire to be better stewards of the environment. This is Win: Lose green economics.


Artificial Turf
Astro Turf, born in the 1960’s has changed over the years. Primarily developed for indoor use, the natural grass replacement made sense in areas where grass could not be grown successfully. Today the lure to expand the use is greater for the green imposter because of, the scarcity of water, dwindling school and municipal maintenance budgets and an admittedly better more “natural” looking product. Additionally, private homeowners are experiencing increasing demands on their time and decreased interest in spending hours a week of maintenance, not to mention water costs and drought concerns. But with the Green Movement” further motivation is provided to be environmentally sensitive. The “green” lure may be enough for some very well meaning people to spend the money to install the natural grass replacement. Truth be known, as a landscape architect, I have specified a private putting green for a homeowner that would allow refinement of their short game. However, we used natural sand as a base and instead of ground up tires, as is common to the artificial turf industry; we used very fine sand as a topping. This gave my client an all weather surface to practice their putting without employing a golf superintendant for the onerous and expensive maintenance regime. It was a good, small scale, solution. I digress a bit here, but it is only to say that there are some uses for this product in limited areas, primarily indoors and without rubber tires infill.

More on this Later