This month I had to comment publicly on an important local strategy which boasted about having “a green thread” running its policies. Yesterday, someone complimented me on the way I attacked the analogy, so I thought I would share:

I don’t normally like the “green thread” analogy, but here it actually seems very appropriate. It suggests the strategy is like a blanket of many colours with a single green thread running through it. If you want to look for green, you will find traces of it, but it does nothing to change the overall colour of the blanket. Likewise in this document you will find hints of green if you look for them, but sustainability has little influence on the whole.

In other words green threads are just a form of greenwash.