Sustainability is harder to find than marketing suggests

It is difficult to find anything truly sustainable. Chicken may be certified organic but when the entire lifecycle of production is taken into account the sustainability goes out the window. The organic feed is shipped thousands of miles, the animals are raised in confinement warehouses by an agricultural conglomerate and sold in a big box store. This process does not support local producers, is not healthy for the chickens or the workers and puts small farmers and retail outlets out of business. Once all the impacts whether social, economic or environmental are taken into account many “green” products come out a smoggy brown.

One of the most greenwashed goods I have ever seen is called the “Guiltless Green Home Theater”. Marketed thusly by the Home Theater Specialists of America, buyers of the entire package get an HD projector, 100” television screen, an AV receiver, a Blu-ray player, a control system, 5.1 surround speaker including subwoofer and four 1.75 KW solar panels. In the prototype display there is even “green seating,” a couch and chairs with leather processed without chromium.  “We took the green initiative even further by re-using some of the carpet,” said the HTSA.

With the 4 panels of this size a family can have “19 hours of off-the-grid entertainment every week.”  All for All for $29,575, “a very appealing price for a lot of people,” according to the write up by Richard Glikes, executive director of HTSA.

Now let’s look at the amount of energy produced by this size solar installation. Four 175 watt panels will churn out 700 watts per hour. That is 22 KW a week if the sun is shining, apparently enough for 19 hours of electronic entertainment time. Comparatively the electricity bill at my parent’s four bedroom suburban home uses this much electricity in a week. The whole house.  By installing the Guiltless Green Home Theater system you can also guiltlessly double your home’s energy usage! Of course you’ll be offsetting the energy drain through solar panels but why not just install the solar panels, forget the Blu-ray and go off-grid with your current energy usage?

Next up – electronics consumption. Guiltlessly purchase all new electronics and ensure the continued conflict in Africa funded by coltan mining and a pollution filled future when the tv and projector are sent overseas to be “recycled.”

The weight is lifting off my shoulders already. I’m going to sit down in my chromium free chair, pop some organic popcorn, crack open a locally brewed beer and guiltlessly watch hours of advertising quality programming.

Elizabeth Ulion is a graduate student at Northwestern University.