I saw this refrigerated trailer at Stranraer while waiting for the ferry to Belfast last week. If you can’t make it out, it is marked with a large green footprint shape proclaiming that it is 99% recyclable.
This is a classic case of green wash as:
1. Most trailers are made of steel and aluminium and will be almost entirely recyclable. So what’s the big deal with this one? Trying to make normal look green is a classic form of greenwash.
2. At an educated guess, the significant components of this trailers’ life cycle impact will the fuel use to move it around and the energy to keep the contents cool. So a green trailer would be lightweight, aerodynamic, very well insulated and have a very efficient compressor. These big issues seem to have been ignored in favour of a lesser factor – another form of greenwash.
Two greenwashes for the price of one. As users of twitter would say, #epicfail.