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| Posted on 5/20/08 at 02:42 PM | |
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I agree with this logic. We have been having discussions with our compliance section here. They spend a lot of time on capital hill and talking with people who are working to set standards. Its maddening. They say (the regulatory people in commitees)that they hate the term "green" because it is not totally descriptive (in their minds)of the standards they are trying to set. More to it....they say the proper term is "sustainability". I (and many others) argue that "green" and "sustainable" are two totally different (yet interrelated) issues. A lot of this comes down to how a printer would define both words as compared to those who are trying to make the standards but know little of the actual problems and constraints inside of the screen printing industry. Green is the wrong word I think. It conjures up rosy public mental visions of everything being so clean and biodegradable that you have a tropical"blue lagoon" scene of palm trees and people swimming around the pristine drainage pipe from my screen reclaim department. It can never be that way. The expectations are too high. I (and others) think that the proper term should be "clean". As in....how clean are you...with reference to how much non-natural materials (notice I said non-natural and not non-biodegradable) are you putting out from your manufacturing process? In a perfect world 100% "0" output would be a perfect score. The ideal. Your rating of how clean you are...would reflect how close to that 100% of "0" you can get. Bear this in mind. Clean does not just mean biodegradable. The effluent from a chicken or pig farm is all biodegradable. But...it can come out in such high volumes that it overwhelms the natural ability of plants and bacteria in the local environment to degrade it or break it down. Clean or green is also about how little you use and how little total materials you output in waste...versus just how biodegradable it is. There are some manufacturing plants that put out very miniscule amounts of highly toxic, non-biodegradable waste...that actually make less impact on the environment than a large plant putting out gobs of totally biodegradable waste. Ok...so sustainable means...to me....are the materials you use...made from materials that are naturally recurring....or not in finite supply (like petroleums, minerals etc). In other words...material wise....can you "sustain" your manufacturing process indefinatly without depleteing natural resources? The reason these are different definitions (green and sustainable) in my book...is that I can think of more than a few industries and instances where using totally sustainable materials....can create non-biodegradable waste products....which would make them not clean or green. sorry...I'm ranting again. Ray | ||
 
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