Rooting Out The Non-Green Booth at Greenfest Chicago: Timeshares, and Cruises, and Greenwash… Oh My!

I spent the last weekend in Chicago meeting up with the rest of the EarthFirst crew (they are in Chicago, I’m in Maine) and attending Greenfest. This year the event was held on the lake on the Navy Pier and I rolled into the event on Saturday to scout out things ahead of our planned Sunday shoot.

I was looking for things to riff off- any out of place companies or greenwashed marketing pitches, something that makes you think of that Seasame Street song “One of these things is not like the other…”.

It didn’t take me long to stumble on the holy grail of the Greenfest Greenwash, or should I say- the un greenwash. The people at this booth were either too stupid or too lazy to even throw a coat of green paint on.

The culprits: Silverleaf Resorts, a big ol’ timeshare resort corporation. They have resorts and facilities in six states and have thousands of acres of resorts, big ass hotel and event facilities, and even a waterpark in their portfolio. There is absolutely zero about them that is green. Zip, zilch, nada, nothing.

Silverleaf Resorts was at Greenfest to give away a Cruise vacation in exchange for giving them your contact info. The last I checked, modern cruise ships are big floating dirty cities that discharge their waste directly into the ocean, burn up scads of fossil fuels, and bring wandering, camera toting hoards to ecologically sensitive places all over the world.

So let me get this right- some very non-green company was in the middle of freakin’ Greenfest, promoting a ‘couldn’t be less green’ prize giveaway.

And their booth was mobbed!

W. T. F.

When I first found their booth I asked them what they did as a company to be green. One of the ladies behind the booth started prattling on about how they have 1,000 acres of land.

Yeah, and….

That was it, they have 1,000 acres of land. That was green to her. Then she stammered around saying something about CFL bulbs and reusable shopping bags. I got the distinct impression that it might have been the first time she had heard the term “green” in this context.

When we came back to Greenfest on Sunday with our camera crew, we set off to hunt them down and ask them what the fsck they were doing at Greenfest. Here’s what we came up with, enjoy the video:

Like our hipster host Jacob said, I hope Silverleaf Resorts does not show up at Greenfest next year. If we find them, I can’t promise we won’t unleash our full armament of green snark and sarcasm. It could get messy.

Coal is the Enemy of Mankind

It makes me sad and angry that there are people in the world who think like this:

Via [GristMill]