Authors Trevor Zink and Roland Geyer suggest that here is no such thing as a “green” product. The corporate sustainability gospel—that green companies
sell green products, and green products have some absolute and well-defined
environmental attributes—evaporates on closer inspection. According to the authors the environmental benefits of green products
are not that they somehow fix the environment or have zero impact, but rather
that their environmental impacts are less than those of similar products.
Products can have an impact on the environment during one or more stages of
their life cycles, which are production, use, and end of life. A natural step is therefore
to tally up the environmental impacts of similar products throughout their life cycles
and compare the results. Read more at
SSIR here .
