Ecocentricity

I think we might have ruined the color green. Which is a shame, because it is one hell of a color.

Seriously, stop and think for a second. I’ll wait – I’ve got all day in fact, seeing as you are reading this at your leisure. I advocate for sustainability, so when I say “green,” what do you think?

Maybe I’m wrong, but I bet you think of some marketing campaign by a company espousing its environmentally friendly practices. If not that, you probably just think of a blue recycling bin (oh, the irony). Those are great things and all, but shouldn’t we mean more than that?

And why “green” in the first place? Yeah, I know the answer is obvious – grass, trees, the entire country of Ireland. We encounter the color in so many natural settings. It is the color of life itself, standing out like a neon sign stating, “Photosynthesis lives here!

Let’s peel back my last question to a slightly deeper level though. Why a color at all? Why use that to communicate environmental friendliness, as opposed to just a phrase or symbol. Shall we chalk it up to a clever marketing tool and call it a day?

I think not. To me, the answer lies in the universality and absoluteness of a color. A person would have to write a phrase or create a symbol. Green though? We don’t invent that. And while we may have varying shades of green, the colors themselves don’t change based on which country we live in or which language we speak. The color green is something to which we can nearly all relate.

Green just is. And for the thousands of generations that humans have existed, our environment has been the same – a reality that most of us have taken for granted. Which is the problem.

Well that was some phenomenal rambling if I might say so myself, and as much for my sake as yours, I should probably make a point. So here we go.

I believe that we should make the color green a gold standard. Actually being green should require more than just doing a handful of good things. For an individual, green should be a lifestyle. For our companies, it should be a culture. Green should be aspirational, recognizing the reality that we can always be just a bit greener. Let’s not take the color for granted, and in doing so hope that we won’t take our environment for granted.

A color that represents the magic of life on earth deserves as much.