Humans are the most fickle of creatures. We have invented fashion as an antidote to boredom and it is this tendency to continually seek, invite, or invent change that is at once our most valuable attribute and our most vexing shortcoming. With respect to global awareness on the environment, I worry that what appears to be a growing wave of green sentiment will unceremoniously break when we become once again bored and turn our attention to other, fresher matters.
You may remember a couple of years during the 90’s when environmental concern especially when it came to cleaning products seemed to be on the rise. There was a period there where it seemed like every household cleaning product that could transmogrify itself was suddenly extolling the virtues of reduced packaging and reduced waste. This was a period where refills were king. Rather than buy a whole new bottle of detergent, you could simply buy a refill package and use it to top up your existing bottle. This was a great thing, resulting in less plastic going to landfills and less energy and waste in the production of the refill packages than in creating new bottles. Things were looking up and it felt good to buy products produced with some (albeit meagre) kind of environmental foresight.
Alas, it turned out that this hopeful flourish was short-lived and was soon replaced with the very alarming and puzzling trend of complete disposability, possibly the most recognizable example of which is the ubiquitous Swiffer™ with its disposable ‘cleaning’ cloths. The ‘reduced waste and packaging’-type marketing simply vanished. There are many other examples including a toilet scrub brush with snap-on cleaning heads that at the push of a button can be dropped into a garbage can so that no one need ever worry about contact with the business end of the brush.
I can only come to the conclusion that what had appeared to be an enhancement of conciousness with respect to the environment during those couple of years was really simply a new marketing angle. Once everyone had gotten into the game, the marketers had to find a new angle — a new fashion — to distinguish their product from everyone else’s and that turned out to be the ease and convenience of disposability.
So, now I see a new green wave rising. Will it be the same as the last one? I’m not sure. Perhaps this one is different. This wave appears to be coming from a groundswell of concern and demand from consumers finally pushed off of the fence by a juggernaut of scientific evidence and by the media that is reporting the science. Are we finally reaching a point where we will tip into a mode of real concern and real conservation, never to return to the old ways of waste and non-accountability again? Or is this simply another trend, something that will again fall out of fashion as we all tire of hearing about it and begin looking for other things to engage our interest? I hope desperately that this change of attitude will continue to gain ground and will not relent until it is engrained in us and in our children. My hope is that the human need to effect change will be actively and constantly applied by everyone in their everyday lives to the problems of waste and resource reduction until we reach a point where we again live in harmony with our environment instead of at odds with it. I want a better world for my children and my grandchildren. If we stop pushing ourselves and each other before we reach that magical tipping point, there may not be another chance at one.