Green or Not….That is the question. How do we go about getting through the process of discovering if a product is truly green? Better yet is there really a truly green product?  Huge caveat here – there is really no such thing a completely green product, as the process of creating a product inherently has an environmental impact.  Therefore really what we are determining is a scale of greenness from ‘not green at all’ to ‘very green’…and everything in between.  That inherently is the problem.

Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) as it is called is quite a process and is used to determine the environmental impact of a product. Simply put doing an LCA requires research from the beginning of the thought process of creating the product till the end of its lifecycle…and everything in between.  Which as you can imagine is a tedious process.

Other terms you may have heard on the topic are “cradle to grave” was one of the first renditions of the concept that did not address the afterlife of a product.  That then morphed into a concept called “cradle to cradle” which was outlined very nicely in a book called Cradle to Cradle/Remaking the Way We Make Things by William McDonough and Michael Braungart.  All very deep thinking if you want to study it.

While you do that I will each week pick a topic, review the generalities around it and then pose to you the question “Green or Not?”

So the Huffington Post published a post last month about NASCAR going green.  My gut reaction was one of ‘yeah right’ until I pondered the article a little.

Here are some things to think about…

Yea’s – The campaign:

• Raises awareness
• Is making some impact – especially in recycling of the oil
• Hybrid race cars – proves to fans that hybrids are quick and reliable

Nay’s

• Nascar is a large user of fuel
• Impact of accidents on environment – no way around crashes and fires
• Environmental impact on raceways and the surrounding areas once races are finished – degradation of land because they do become small cities
• The amount of trash that is produced on the site

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