Beware the Green Marketing Monster!

With our President making energy and environmental issues a force for economic and environmental change, we need to be wary of the coming hucksters. Market geniuses will not allow this time to pass without jumping on the bandwagon trying to sell you everything in the name of “green”. Notice how many slogans and advertising campaigns have ripped off the Obama campaign slogan “Yes We Can”? Well expect worse with green marketing.

First of all, let me say that I am all for minimizing our negative affects to the planet. If one thinks about it, reducing our carbon footprint and developing new technologies to eliminate our dependence on oil & other such fuels will not only help reduce pollution, but just as importantly, spur on our transition away from the 20th century lifestyle into the 21st century.

So what does all this have to do with a culinary blog? Simple. The aforementioned marketing people have already begun placing the “green” label on kitchen tools, gadgets and food. What I want to accomplish is to help everyone see through the glitz and glam of advertising to determine what is really worth getting behind.

There are two areas to look at to determine how much “green” is there. First is the hardware for the kitchen, second the “software” or food.

Hardware first. The first areas I have seen marketed as green are in cookware. Scanpan, a fine company from Denmark, is selling their Professional cookware line as Green. What does this entail? Well, the gist of the campaign is that their non-stick cookware is made free from PTFE and PFOA materials. Their non-stick formula is a ceramic and titanium blend, not the Teflon based coating in most non-stick cookware. Contrary to popular lore, PFOAs are not responsible for contamination or cancer causation while preparing food, but is causing problems in and around the processing plants. I will talk about the PFOA issue in detail in an upcoming article. There is much evidence of ground water contamination where PFOAs are processed. In addition, workers in said plants have become sick due to the PFOAs. So therefore if a company could produce an effective non-stick element without these harmful chemicals so much the better, for people and the environment. So in this instance, yes there is a “green” factor to the product. In fact I can say that based on my experiences, I find the ceramic titanium non-stick pans from Scanpan are better than Teflon based pans. The Scanpan product is stronger, more rugged, are safe with metal utensils and can withstand higher heat than their Teflon counterparts. As with most of these “green” products, you will pay more money for these pans. The additional cost may be warranted here as these pans will have a longer life than their cheaper Teflon based counterparts.

Other companies, such as Cuisinart, are marketing “green” cookware that uses ceramic non-stick elements and additionally there is a focus on the production process. In the case of the Cuisinart cookware, they are using 70% recycled steel in the handles and recycled packaging materials. Which brings me to another point to consider.

So many of these companies are extremely wasteful with their packaging. As I have mentioned before, I work in a culinary retail shop and have first hand experience with the loads of pointless plastic packaging and layers of cardboard used in products sold to us. Like many shops, we strip away as much as is practical. Mostly, this is done as a space saving tactic to get as much merchandise on the floor as possible. So to properly assess a company’s green intention is to review the packaging process. There should be requirements for manufacturers to reduce the unnecessary packaging from their products. Of course, safe guarding fragile products has certain requirements, but there must be better and less trash inducing elements we could use to package these fragile products for shipping.

I can’t tell you how much time my colleagues and I spend removing plastic bags and wraps from metal tools or gadgets where the plastic has no logical use. If something were going to scratch, a thin plastic bag or wrap isn’t going to prevent that from happening. We discard bags and bags of plastic every week. And given that the city where our store is located has no business based recycling plan, all this material goes into the general trash bin, along with tons of cardboard.

Being green requires that we look at the big picture and see there are many aspects to reducing waste and excessive energy loss.

Which flows into my next point; the use of “green” power generation at the plants. To make the conversions to alternative energy requires heavy capital investment by the manufacturer. These manufacturers will not let it go unnoticed that they are using alternative power generation in the advertising. And well they shouldn’t; it is important to know who is really working to make things better. I believe we should reward these companies with our patronage, IF they are making good products in a progressive production process.

Now for the “software” or food if you will. Here the only new marketing you will see is the aforementioned green production facilities. I have seen this most often with coffee roasters and makers of processed foods.

Of course the biggest selling point for food is organic, which we are all familiar with these days. However given the recent scandals with tainted “organic” food, it is clear there is no real oversight in this arena. Are we really buying organically grown food? Is it being processed in a safe way? The answer is at this moment, in doubt.

Choosing organic means we want less chemical/artificial fertilizers and pesticides used on the food. We can save the land from much abuse, thereby improving the environment.

Additionally, we can choose to reduce our carbon footprint in relation to what we eat, when. We need to follow some simple rules: eat local, eat fresh, eat seasonal.

Eating local reduces the transportation necessary to bring food to our shops and markets. Eating fresh reduces energy required to process foods for ease of cooking. Eating seasonally means less effort by food purveyors to ship out of season foods to far off places.

First, we need to buy from places where the food is truly local; farmers markets, local grocery stores and food co-ops. This will help save our small farmers from being bought out by giant agribusiness, who are the leading culprits in chemical use and abuse.

Second, we need to ask ourselves if there are local producers of certain products. For instance, are there no good American makers of steel cut oats or is Ireland the only producer? Is glacier water better than something produced locally?

Thirdly, we need to be willing to do without certain foods in the off seasons. Why do we need to eat a tomato in December? They are not very tasty and there are plenty of good nutritionally sound cold weather foods we can eat until warmer weather brings fresh new foods our way. Likewise, if we resisted the urge to eat seafood, like crab, out of season maybe the stocks wouldn’t be near extinction.

As much as we may click our jaws in agreement, we often act against these ideas. We are guilty of seeking out hyper-convenience, shopping for everything at one place. Some say this reduces the amount of driving we do…maybe, but not in practical reality.

This contradiction in our behavior only reinforces to the marketing types that they can deceive us with words like “green”. The idea of “green” in our culinary world requires us to not be so lazy and ignorant of the consequences of our daily actions.

Aside from changing our individual behavior, we need to carefully scrutinize the marketing campaigns to see if we are being sold snake oil or really seeing change for the good. Let us not chase after every product listed as “green”. Let us instead look behind the curtain to examine why the company is pushing “green” in their products. There are pioneering companies trying to make products of better materials, using better energy sources and creating less waste. To increase our savvy let’s run everything through our check list of “green” values:

As we reward the pioneering companies, we will motivate other companies to follow suit. These changes will push us further into the future where the energy and ecology problems we face today are problems of the past.

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