There’s far too much green crap around.

I’m not talking about the clean energy subsidies that PM David Cameron was (allegedly) referring to using these words. No, I’m talking about the real green crap that actually holds sustainability back:

• Pointless ‘green’ giveaways – recycled plastic pencils that break your pencil sharpener, desk thermometers that get binned, bars of fair-trade chocolate that get eaten and forgotten. What’s the point?
• Green Champions – most networks of green champions I see are dysfunctional and a huge amount of energy is being spent desperately trying to keep the network going. Give responsibility to people with authority instead – and use the time freed up to do something useful.
• Gimmicks like putting sweets on people’s computer keyboards if they switch off their computer overnight. I’m forever surprised that organisations will pay consultants good money to spout nonsense like this.
• Supplier questionnaires – many suppliers spend so much time responding to different customer’s questionnaires, they don’t have time to actually improve their performance – and then find the data provided rarely has any influence in contract decisions.
• Awareness posters – when was the last time you saw a poster and changed your life significantly? I’m guessing never.
• Regurgitating idiotic received wisdom – if you need to buy a drink, bottled water will almost certainly have a lower ecological footprint than all of the alternatives except thirst. Not all biodiesels are evil. Carbon offsetting is not immoral – no-one dies.
• Talking woo-hoo eco-bollocks like ‘eco-centric world views’, ‘endosymbiotic thrivability’ or ‘spiritual animistic reverence’. Just don’t. No-one will listen anyway.
• Hitching sustainability to the latest fad. “You can’t have sustainability without mindfulness” someone told me recently. You know what? You can.

If you make one sustainability resolution this year, how about to cut the green crap?