A local chef (Local is San Francisco) who is a highly responsible person found his restaurant so embroiled in a bureaucratic red tape battle (72 pages of documentation to become certified and then another 72 pages and a fine when a detail was noticed out of place) that he now loudly advises every restaurant to just do what’s right and possible and avoid the “movement”.

My years as one of the leaders of the local chapter of the best known sustainability movement brought home to me how much ego, false information and blatant self interest is involved in the organic and green community.

The fact is, as stated here, that having knowledge of what is right, you should do it. This was the case before the press pounced on greenity and began pommelling it to death with swooning adjectives and before Gore turned a valid scientific concern into chicken little hysteria.

Nice piece.

Solar power is out of reach as far as cost goes. Refitting the whole building with ‘on demand’ hot water is a dream waiting for the lottery to smile on us. We use passive solar in the winter and have quite a few deciduous trees that block the sun in the summer.

Even with the small amount we are able to accomplish: your registration form is printed on the back of whatever letter-size piece of paper is at hand; we grow our own flowers and herbs; we belong to a CSA; we don’t hand out bottles of water to guests, we filter the tap water and provide glasses for drinking; we don’t have an elaborate, wasteful buffet that ends up in the trash because anything you might have touched can’t be reused; no plasticware; limited paper napkins available; no plastic wrap on your drinking glass,

there is still way more that can be done that we just cannot afford. Because, guess what, you CAN’T charge more for green lodging, guests won’t pay it unless they see an advantage to staying in a green property over a ‘regular’ property.

I do quote our reductions on our website. How many thousands of gallons of water saved, how many kW hours saved, etc. We don’t shove it in your face, there is a short list in the guest book of what we are doing and how you can help, I post ‘home’ tips on our bulletin board so guests can take some ideas away with them, we ask guests for tips they use themselves.

It turns out the product is mostly sugar - after water its the top ingredient. My friend works there and wont even drink it or give it to her kids - she said many of the employees who are health conscious wont either because they know it’s all sugar with a green marketing spin . they even added drops of organic acai to their energy drink so they could list it on the container and ride the rainforest trend and acai health benefits. wake up! acai is purple and the drink isnt.

my friend needs a job, but feels guilty because the drink is marketed as healthy and good for the world and really it’s sugar water sold by the healthy beverage company - my advice to her was that people would look at the ingredients and see the truth - let the buyer beware. Bur she just told me something that made me rethink my advice.

I’m not sure this was the best advice. they use fair trade green tea, but it is listed so far down on the ingredients label, yet they put the fair trade logo on their bottles. And then, they added vitamin c to their carbonated, sugared beverages to get their sodas approved for schools.

Because of the certifications, parents think that their kids are drinking a good, organic nutritional product when in reality they are consuming organic sugar - 35 grams in a 12 oz bottle. And, the icing on the cake is that the owners drive huge SUV’s and are getting rich as kids and parents think that the are drinking a healthy , earth friendly product from a company that cares.

Let the next generation of diabetics beware. Greenwashing is everywhere and can have dangerous health effects.

Cheers,

Varun Badhwar