Larvatus Prodeo

If you wander into an inner-suburban bookshop at the moment, the first thing that hits you is the enormous piles of remaindered polemics about the evils of the Bush administration. The second thing that hits you is the number of green how-to guides, promising to teach you the secrets of an eco-friendly existence.

As I and others have noted repeatedly (for instance, on “food miles”), it’s much harder than people usually think to get an accurate handle on the overall impact their actions are having on the environment, and such analysis by its very nature has to be quantitative. Yes, my friends, you need numbers. These books, on my brief flick-throughs, never seem to point to any such studies, let alone explain them. Driving half an hour in a Volvo XC90 to pick up your sustainably-grown coffee isn’t likely to be a net win for the environment, but these books never grapple with this kind of trade-off.

But the prize for the most ridiculous “green guide” has to go to Gorgeously Green by one Sophie Uliano, who seems to market herself as the Green Guru for the Vogue set. Continue reading ‘Gorgeous greenwashing’