Greener by Design

i find it a little paradox that executives from proctor&gamble, a company known for using fresh-fibre from the rainforest for its products, are speaking on a conference for greener design. it annihilates the conference's credibility.

Kirsten,
I simply disagree with you.
Yes, most corporate america had and still has unsustainable business practices, but that doesn't mean that if they do decide to start their sustainability journey that they can't present their progress and share experiences at a green design conference. There is nothing paradoxical about it, companies change missions/visions/goals often. I have faith in GreenBiz.com to weed out any greenwashing stories.

Vicotoria,
How naive are you? You do realize the kind of money/power these companies have? You really think that their presence at this conference of how to make things "greener" is a sign of the changing times? Or signifies that these companies are making positive changes? You're forgetting one very important thing, or maybe you don't know this... for companies of this magnitude and power its always about the bottom line. At the end of the day it's still some little kid or woman in China who is getting paid next to nothing and working in the worst of conditions so someone here in the states can feel good about the fact that they are using a green product.

This conference is a joke. Get some of the biggest companies together to look and feel better about themselves by pretending they care. "get those tree huggers to buy our products by saying we're going green and hopefully they'll forget the whole sweatshop thing. Their attention span isn't big enough to remember both."

There is plenty to say about Wal-Mart and Nike. Am I the only one abhorred by Proctor & Gamble's use of animal testing? P&G conducts a huge amount or animal testing for products we don't need. Sustainability, I feel, should begin with reduction.

Reduce, reuse, recycle.

I would have reduced the featured businesses by at least one and kicked P&G to the curb.

Why not feature businesses that have been sustainability leaders from the beginning. When it wasn't popular. Like when it was obvious that business did it because they cared and they FOUND ways to make their practice profitable. Everyone's jumping on the triple bottom line bandwagon. Certainly the TBL manta is a good thing for sustainability, but heck, we should be rewarding the leaders of this movement.

hi
I'm actually writing a paper about green design and I feel like a lot of the companies such as P&G, are just catching onto a trend. My concern is that it is a fashion statement and not a statement of values or ethics, this could then mean that in the future we will have another 60's throw away society era...
I agree with Roy, P&G are hypocrits "we'll save trees but screw the animals" and the reason why they test in the first place is because of their product turnover, if they really believed in saving the environment they should be reducing the new products and hence testing. Environmentally friendly surely should mean protecting fauna as well as flora.
Anybody who has something to add about green design, even if you practice it, I'd love to hear about it
thanks!

The conference isn't the problem, it's the fact that large corporations control the standards in the US. They have the cash, they tell the conference organizers, the ISO folks, the people at the USGBC, etc, how they are willing to work. If the public (notice I didn't insult you by calling you a "consumer") set standards, we'd all be in a better position. Now anyone want to tell us all how to accomplish that relatively simple goal? "With all our technology, we still can't figure out how to cooperate..." - Ben Harper