Oil Companies Actually Getting Less Green

Most of the major oil companies have spent the last few years trying to convince us that they’re going green. BP, Exxon, Shell and others started running advertisements proclaiming that they were investing in renewable energy technology – hell, Exxon went so far as to leave a comment here on EarthFirst about the company’s supposed efforts to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, claiming frustration at their bad reputation among environmentalists.

But, all of the greenwashed facades are coming crashing down. The world’s oil giants aren’t exactly lining up to follow President Obama’s green lead, and some of them are even breaking commitments they’ve already made.

From The New York Times:

Royal Dutch Shell said last month that it would freeze its research and investments in wind, solar and hydrogen power, and focus its alternative energy efforts on biofuels. The company had already sold much of its solar business and pulled out of a project last year to build the largest offshore wind farm, near London.

BP, a company that has spent nine years saying it was moving “beyond petroleum,” has been getting back to petroleum since 2007, paring back its renewable program. And American oil companies, which all along have been more skeptical of alternative energy than their European counterparts, are studiously ignoring the new messages coming from Washington.

“In my view, nothing has really changed,” Rex W. Tillerson, the chief executive of Exxon Mobil, said after the election of President Obama.

“We don’t oppose alternative energy sources and the development of those. But to hang the future of the country’s energy on those alternatives alone belies reality of their size and scale.”

The New York Times reports that Exxon is counting on oil, gas and coal to be just as prevalent in 2050 as they are today.  Perhaps that would be true if we were counting on oil giants alone to fund the renewable energy industry – but thankfully, we’re not. They’re dragging their feet for a reason. Hydrocarbons are a huge source of revenue for them and they’re not prepared to let go of them.

The fact is, the world is ready to start moving beyond fossil fuels. Oil companies need to shape up and get serious about renewable energy if they want to survive. It’s possible to adapt instead of keeping a death grip on the ways of the 20th century. Actually following through on their own green claims would be a start.

Link [The New York Times]
Photo credit: London Rising Tide

Tesco Greenwash: Turn Lights into Flights!

A British supermarket seems to have failed to grasp the concept of going green. You see, Tesco has unveiled a new program that rewards shoppers for purchasing compact fluorescent light bulbs – wiTesco Greenwash: Turn Lights into Flights!th airline miles.  The ‘Every little helps’ promotion is meant to urge shoppers to cut back on energy at home, and then hop on an airplane and rack up a huge carbon footprint to make up for it.

From The Guardian, via Eden Bee

Tesco chief executive Terry Leahy is now offering air miles when you buy a low energy lightbulb. What next? Free packet of 20 Benson & Hedges with every Nicorette patch? A dozen king-size Mars bars with each box of Ryvita? Talk about counter-productive. It’s like being lost in the desert, miles from anywhere and eating your own legs to sustain yourself during your search for help.

Granted, the promotion actually allows shoppers to earn airline miles for all purchases – it’s just that some schmuck in the advertising department needed to find a word that rhymes with ‘flights’. LIGHTS! Genius!

But, as The Guardian’s Ed Gillespie points out, the real problem is that ads like this help feed into the notion that you can make a few small changes and still go about your very non-green daily routine – and call yourself ‘green’. It’s like taking a reusable bag to Wal-Mart and filling it with plastic crap from China. Not exactly helping things, is it?

Link [The Guardian] via [Eden Bee]

Greenwash Alert! Pepsi’s ‘Eco-Fina’ Bottle

We got an interesting press release in our inbox this week announcing a supposedly eco-friendly bottled water.  PepsiCo has launched its new ‘Eco-Fina’ bottle, which uses 50 percent less plastic than regular water bottles, making it the lightest half-liter bottle of any nationally distributed bottled water on the market – and they want anyone with environmentally conscious tendencies to know about it. But is it really green?

From the press release:

At a weight of 10.9 grams, the Eco-Fina Bottle is made with 50 percent less plastic, eliminating an estimated 75 million pounds of plastic annually.  Aquafina is also driving additional environmental benefits by producing the bottle at purification centers where filling occurs and by eliminating cardboard base pads from 24-packs, which will contribute to saving 20 million pounds of corrugate by 2010.

The new bottle features an eye-catching “rippled web” design that goes beyond aesthetics, ensuring its structural soundness and functionality.  The Eco-Fina Bottle will be available in 24-packs and begins shipping to retail outlets nationwide this April.

IT’S A PLASTIC WATER BOTTLE. It’s not green. No, not at all – and what’s especially annoying about this sort of thing is the fact that millions of gullible customers will feel better about their bottled water habits when they buy this crap – “Oh, look, it’s ‘ECO’. I can keep buying bottled water without guilt!”

Plastic is a problem – only a small fraction of bottles actually end up getting recycled, they’re made using petroleum and there are absolutely no benefits to drinking water shipped from halfway across the country (or even the world, in some cases) as opposed to filtered tap water.  But bottled water is a huge revenue source for companies like PepsiCo, and of course they’re going to try to hang on to your money with all their might – hence greenwashing efforts like this one.

Link [Eco-Fina]

Google Co-Founder Larry Page Building Green Mansion

Yet another gaudy “green” mansion is in the works in Palo Alto, California and it belongs to none other than Google co-founder Larry Page. Page is planning a 6,000-sq-ft “eco-friendly” four-bedroom GreenPoint-rated home on the lot next door to his current $7 million home.

From Earth2Tech, via Ecorazzi:

To be sure, Page plans to use some pretty cool stuff: Recycled materials that have low levels of volatile organic compounds (or none at all), a rooftop garden, solar panels, zinc cladding and pervious pavement, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. And the planned structure will likely take advantage of smart energy tools — IT technology that can help the homeowner better manage and reduce energy consumption — in particular Google’s PowerMeter.

Of course, this begs the question, WHY?  We’ve already asked whether a mansion be green at all and answered ourselves with a resounding “no”. While Page’s new digs won’t be nearly as ridiculous and anti-green as Acqua Liana, the Florida monstrosity being billed as an eco-friendly mansion, it’s still kind of silly. I mean, awesome, it’s gonna have solar panels and will be made partially from recycled materials, but how much room does one family need?  Building a massive second home right next to your current home isn’t green, no matter how many eco-friendly features you pack into it.

Link [Earth2Tech] via [Ecorazzi]
Photo credit: Intel

The 10 Dumbest Green Buildings on Earth

While it’s great that green building practices are gaining popularity, sometimes, LEED certification doesn’t exactly mesh with the building’s intended purpose. Case in point: eco-friendly gas stations, parking garages and – amazingly – bottled water plants. Greener Building Elements has come up with a great list of 10 ridonkulous LEED-certified buildings that’ll have you scratching your head and calling greenwash.

From Greener Building Elements, via Treehugger:

1. BP’s Helios House Gas Station – Los Angeles, Cal.

Yes, there is an LEED-certified gas station. It’s actually a nice building, complete with rainwater collection, solar panels, recycled building materials, and LED lighting. However, don’t think you’ll be able to refuel with biodiesel or charge up your electric car—they’re only in the petroleum-dealing business. How green of them, right?

2. Justin Timberlake’s Golf Course/Lodge – Woodstock, Tenn.

So Justin Timberlake decided that he wants to buy a golf course and fix it up with an LEED-certified lodge. While it’s an improvement compared to most other golf courses, the fact remains that maintaining a golf course takes chemicals and lots of water. In the United States alone, golf courses total more than 1.7 million acres and consume around 4 billion gallons of water every day. How does a green lodge counteract the water used to maintain the course? Justin, if you really want to be green, you should have turned it into a wildlife sanctuary instead.

3. Nestle Pure Life Water Bottling Plant – Boiling Springs, Tenn.

While this isn’t the only LEED-certified water bottling plant, it’s listed for having the most greenwashed name. Ozarka, Arrowhead, Ice Mountain, and Deer Park water bottling plants also have LEED certifications of some sort, but they couldn’t compete with Pure Life in the name department. If anyone needs a reminder of why bottling water is a bad idea, here are five reasons to ditch the bottle. Oh, and Nestle as a whole won’t be getting an award for their treatment of the planet and its people any time soon.

Get the rest over at Greener Building Elements. Treehugger has also added a few of their own hilarious (yet sad) examples to the list.

Link [Greener Building Elements] + [Treehugger]

Will Green Jobs Become the New Greenwash?

Green jobs are coming, and they’re going to be a big part of rebounding from the global economic downturn – but without a clear definition of what a green job is, will companies use the term to intentionally or even unintentionally mislead people? Joel Makower, Executive Editor of GreenBiz.com and author of Strategies for the Green Economy warns that the fervor over green jobs could lead to misuse of the term, and eventually engender cynicism about all things ‘green’.

Makower explains that, since the term ‘green jobs’ has been thrown around so much lately, people are putting all of their hopes on the idea that millions of green jobs are definitely imminent and will save the economy.  In the coming months, we’ll hear many green jobs claims by companies, industries, states, politicians and others interested in showcasing the job-creation potential of the green economy.  But without a real definition of what makes a job ‘green’, the term could be easily misused.

From Joel Makower:

The squishiness of green job definitions is troubling, reminiscent of so many other poorly defined aspects of the green vocabulary — words and terms like “natural,” “nontoxic,” and “environmentally friendly” — whose use and misuse in the marketplace ultimately led to public skepticism over all green product claims. The use of these words — none of which has a legal definition — is discouraged by green marketing specialists, and by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission in its Green Marketing Guidelines.

Will the broad, unsubstantiated phrase “green jobs” similarly be problematic? Will it lead to a public backlash as people come to assume that green jobs are just another meaningless marketing claim bandied about by corporations and politicians seeking to green up their images? Will green jobs be seen as greenwash?

Makower points out that existing definitions offered by economic forecasting firms and the United Nations Environment Programme are too narrow or too broad, either preventing some authentically green jobs from being categorized as such or including jobs that technically shouldn’t fit.

While it’s important to make sure that the term isn’t used incorrectly or to mislead people about the true nature of a company’s actions and intentions, I don’t know that we should dally too much over terminology, at least not right now. We need to act quickly to create as many green jobs as possible – and while that concept may be a bit muddy right now – it seems that the vast majority of green job opportunities out there are the real thing.

Link [Joel Makower]
Photo credit: Green for All

Pranking on The Coal Industry: NRDC Spoofs “America’s Power”

The good folks over at NRDC have taken America’s Power website (Coal Industry Front) and added a varnish of truth to it for today’s Prankstivities.

Before:

After:

Coal is the Enemy of Mankind. Anyone who rips on the purveyors of humanity’s destruction is good in my book. Nice Work NRDC! Swing over and check out their spin.

Thanks to Michael for sending this one over.

Links [Evil Coal Baron Fronted Shill Group] & [Fun Loving Green Pranksters Spoof Page]

Vanity Fair’s Greenwashed Cover: There’s Nothing Green About Madonna

Why the fizuck is Madonna on the cover of the latest green Vanity Fair issue? She’s a wrinkly ol’ piece of plastic ass with a bigger environmental footprint than many small African nations. Blech.

Link [Ecorazzi]