A recent study by researchers at the University of Granada reveals that housewives are more likely than college students to recycle glass bottles.  Environmental bloggers have expressed their surprise at the findings; Kiera Butler at the Blue Marble Blog, part of social justice nonprofit Mother Jones, concludes sagely that despite college students’ “boundless reserves of idealism… [their] ecological awareness does not necessarily lead to action.” 

In fact, a theme can be drawn through to the world of cleantech products:  creation is sexier than conservation. 

After all, it’s much more fun to buy fair trade coffee and install solar panels than to rinse your milk jugs or remember to turn off the lights.  Doing something trendy is easier than conspicuously not doing something that’s all too easy — like throwing that glass bottle “away” — even when the less sexy actions are more meaningful.

Similarly, the trend in business-greening these days is to pour money toward environmental stopgaps, rather than accepting the deeper fact that the most material and energy use occurs through inefficiency and waste, not during the creation of value.  For example, Amory Lovins notes that only 1% of the energy generated by an automobile’s engine is used to move the driver (Natural Capitalism 24).

So how can you tell if a company is serious about reducing its footprint?  Observe if they went for the best solution — or the sexiest.  In a conversation with the sustainability director at Sasaki, an international design firm with plenty of green cred, I learned that the firm considered covering its south-facing exterior wall with solar panels.  Sasaki realized that it could more effectively use the money to reballast its fluorescent lights for greater efficiency, saving more energy than the panels would have generated.  That’s more than public relations — that’s planet relations.

Disclosure: At the time of the writing of this post, I have no financial relationships with any of the organizations mentioned, except as explicitly indicated.