With the community emphasis on climate change and the need for more sustainable practices increasing within recent years, green marketing has hit an all-time high.
As consumers call for more recyclable and reusable products, companies are forced to comply, and many of them do so with the tactic of green marketing.
Green marketing means that a company markets its products by highlighting the fact that they are environmentally friendly. This often includes advertising the ability of those products to be recycled, reused, or composted. Green marketing can also include advertising the sustainably-sourced materials that the product is made out of.
The idea that companies are moving towards more green products, and thus advertising their more positive impacts on the environment is a positive outcome and is viewed by many as a step towards a more sustainable world. However, all too often, companies are using green marketing to trick consumers into believing that their products are more environmentally friendly than the research indicates.
For example, PLA, a composite polymer derived from bioproducts such as corn and cassava root, is widely marketed as a completely compostable plastic, leading consumers to believe that by using PLA products, they are using completely sustainable products and largely reducing their negative impacts on the environment. However, in order to actually compost PLA products, intensive biodegradation is required and most facilities lack financial resources to process the material [1].
According to a report from Samantha Lubow, the Environment Initiatives Coordinator for CalDining, UC Berkeley purchases roughly 3 million disposable PLA products every year [2]. Even if students compost these products, the facilities simply cannot afford to process them, and the material goes to waste despite the marketing used by companies to brand PLA products as compostable and environmentally friendly.
Another major contributor to PLA waste is 3D printing, which is used in many industries for prototyping and designing. However, especially for people who are new to 3D printing, the process can result in many errors and failed prints.
In their introductory 3D printing training, the Makerspace at UC Berkeley identifies the myriad of issues a designer can encounter during 3D printing, ranging from too much extrusion to too little infill. 3DMC, the 3D Modeling Club on campus, which often runs classes on how to model and print in 3D, estimates that 50% of prints fail. With over a hundred 3D printers on the UC Berkeley campus, failed prints are mostly sent to the landfill, which is not only a waste of resources but is also harmful to the environment [3].
This problem can be alleviated through implementing a closed-loop system that collects failed prints and recycles them into viable 3D printing filament, which is why this 3D Printing Filament Reclamation Project Team exists on campus.
By implementing green marketing without actually making their products more sustainable, many major companies twist the truths of their environmental impact.
[1] “Interview with Composting Manager of Republic Services.” 8 Oct. 2016.
[2] Lubow, Samantha. “Re: ‘Quantifying PLA Waste - How Much PLA Does Cal Dining Purchase?".” Re: "Quantifying PLA Waste - How Much PLA Does Cal Dining Purchase?", 3 Nov. 2017. Cal Dining Sustainability.
[3] Shen, Jennifer J. “Comparative Life Cycle Assessment of Polylactic Acid (PLA) and Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET).” Comparative Assessment of PLA and PET, 2011.
This blog post was written by Brooke Chang.
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