Consumers and corporations alike have been looking for green products. That is, we want products that do not have any kind of bad environmental, social, or economic impact.

They don’t and can’t exist. We make all kinds of lifestyle choices we think will make us sustainable. They don’t and can’t.

Am I saying we should give up and not even try to live green? No.

We can achieve a more nearly sustainable lifestyle. We just have to be aware of the hidden impacts our choices have. And turn off the voices of those who claim that only drastic lifestyle changes count as sustainable.

Years ago, Colin Beavan wrote a book titled No Impact Man. He lived in New York and wanted to live for a year with no environmental impact. So he went off grid, tried to eliminate generating trash, avoided the subway and elevators, refused to buy products in packaging, etc. That kind of lifestyle is hardly sustainable for a subsistence farmer, let alone in New York. After a year, Beavan had to go back to most of his old habits.

Sustainable means, at bottom, things we can do indefinitely as individuals or as a society that have no bad environmental, economic, or social consequences. Most sustainability advocates, myself included, have advocated gradual introduction of new habits that we can make permanent. So far, however, we have no available choices that have no bad environmental, economic, or social consequences.

But if we can’t make absolutely good choices, we have to settle for less bad choices. And we have to understand the complexity of available choices. Either that, or we risk feeling good about the choice of apparently green products that is not any less bad. And may even more harmful.

The lifecycle of products

We can easily suppose that LEDs instead of incandescent bulbs, electric anything instead of whatever burns fossil fuels, or refusing plastic are good things. Or at least always less bad.

But let’s not forget that all products have three stages of their lifecycle: production, use, and end of life. Also, let’s not forget that we don’t make our choices in a vacuum. Whatever we choose will likely have an effect on other people’s choices. And that effect can increase or decrease the greenness of our choices.

As a society, we have begun to catch on. A whole new profession makes lifecycle assessments. It measures a whole set of impacts to determine that one option is greener than another.

A full lifecycle assessment entails a more complicated perspective than most of us—or most corporate managers—can handle. It’s easier to conclude that natural fibers are greener than polyester. Or that products with recycled content are more sustainable than products without. We can assume rightly or wrongly. If we can find a lifecycle assessment, it can go a long way to giving us adequate information.

Unfortunately, a full lifecycle assessment still has a fatal flaw. Using it to identify green products requires some kind of benchmark to measure everything against. What’s a reliable benchmark? Is there even such a thing?

Why lifecycle assessments can’t guarantee green products

Consider packaging.

Recycled plastic packaging may seem obviously greener than the same product packaged in virgin plastic. But what about paper instead of plastic? Or bamboo instead of paper? But surely the greenest option is no packaging at all. If that’s the benchmark, any packaging at all fails to be green.

Packaging, almost by definition, is a single-use product. And we can’t entirely do without it. Just think what packaging accomplishes. It

• protects products from breaking or spoiling
• contains products you couldn’t carry without it, such as two pounds of rice
• identifies a product and communicates information about it
• makes theft or tampering more difficult

Whatever we consider as green products probably comes in some kind of packaging. Any product, packaged or not, raises similar complications.

What’s more, some things we buy have such a tight plastic seal that it’s very difficult to remove it so we can use them.

Why is that?

Well, 40 years ago, some psychopath who has never been identified bought or stole bottles of Tylenol, poisoned them, and returned them to store shelves. Then, people bought those bottles and died.

How much other waste must society create just to protect itself from thugs? No lifecycle assessment can account for evil.

Feeling good about choices that are not sustainable

Recycling

Remember this order: reduce, reuse, recycle. Recycle comes last.

We have a waste problem and can’t recycle our way out of it. We have given municipal governments the responsibility of collecting recyclables. And the methods they use are too inconvenient to get a high rate of participation and too expensive even to break even on selling the output.

A lot of people want an eco-friendly lifestyle but recycle incorrectly. Aspirational recycling, putting the wrong things out to the curb, can help people feel good, but it makes a broken system work even less well.

We can only solve our waste problem by acquiring less stuff to begin with. Reduce consumption in other words. And that includes finding ways to reuse what we have instead of buying something new.

• Refuse to buy disposables or anything with excessive packaging.
• Avoid impulse buying or panic buying in emergencies.
• Buy high-quality clothing, furniture, tools, etc. with an eye toward keeping it a long time.

And the whole point of recycling is to reduce the need to make or mine virgin materials. In fact, it doesn’t. Demand for virgin materials continues to increase.

Also, avoid sending anything compostable to the landfill if at all possible. That includes not only food waste but non-recyclable paper, hair, ash from the fireplace, and all manner of organic waste. But beware of aspirational composting and learn what to compost at home.

Buying only used products

One good way to reuse something is to buy as much as possible from thrift stores or at garage/estate sales. You can find a wide variety of products that you can use for a long time without buying anything new. Used products feel like green products.

But don’t feel smug about it.

Nothing is available used that wasn’t once a new product. And whether it’s a shirt or a frying pan or a car, there aren’t enough used products to satisfy the demand. Buying used products is good, but buying only used products is not sustainable.

Buying too many green products

Reusable cloth bags are greener than disposable plastic bags. Ceramic mugs are greener than fast-food coffee cups. Aren’t they?

But it takes a lot more energy to make one cloth bag or one ceramic mug instead of one disposable one. Get as many cloth bags as you’ll use frequently. More than that is unsustainable. One mug per person at home and one in the office are all anyone needs. More than that is unsustainable

For that matter, most people don’t really need straws to drink. So why buy a reusable stainless-steel straw (which you have to wash frequently) rather than no straw at all? Buying nothing is nearly always more sustainable than buying something.

Buying greener versions of anything you already have

What you already have is probably more eco-friendly than any products you can buy.

When I needed a new blanket, I wound up with a polyester velour blanket. Then I learned about microfibers. A cotton blanket would have been a more sustainable choice. No microplastics.

So should I ditch the polyester one and get a cotton one instead? No.

I really have only two choices to dispose of the polyester blanket—or anything else I have where there might be a more sustainable choice. I can throw it out. That means it won’t get washed and therefore won’t shed microplastics into the environment. But it also adds to our landfill problem.

Or, I can donate it to a thrift store. In that case, someone else will use it, wash it, and shed microplastics.

Every product we buy has embedded water and energy. That is, it took water and energy to make it, package it, and transport it. That’s why a lifecycle assessment begins with production. I have already bought the embedded water and energy of the polyester blanket. If I get rid of it to buy a cotton one, I also buy all its embedded water and energy.

But actually, we shouldn’t even assume that cotton products—even organic cotton—are green products. Growing cotton and making fabric from it have negative environmental consequences.

Not even electric cars are green products

If you drive a car, you’ll eventually have to replace it. At that time, by all means pick the most eco-friendly choice you can. But dig beneath the surface. It’s a more complicated question than most people think.

Driving an electric vehicle or hybrid instead of a car that runs on fossil fuels seems green. It reduces or eliminates emissions. That is, from the vehicle. But the battery requires lithium, cobalt, nickel, and manganese. And using those metals to make batteries requires mining them. If you’re tempted, then to unload a car that still runs well to get a new hybrid or EV, it’s less green than you might think.

If a consumer chooses a hybrid SUV instead of a conventional SUV, it seems like a greener choice. But what if that same consumer chooses an hybrid SUV instead of a conventional compact sedan? Maybe the gas-burning sedan gets better fuel economy than the hybrid SUV.

It also appears that the owners of a newer, greener car will drive more than before. For example, they might decide they can afford to commute to a more distant job. They do not decrease their consumption of fuel in that case. They may even increase it.

By the same token, solar and wind power seem greener than electricity from fossil fuels. They are, but not as much as it might seem. Norway is planning on building a copper mine in its Arctic region to support renewable energy. It will both pollute and hamper the lifestyle of indigenous people.

Beyond the mining problem, we haven’t figured out what to do with rotor blades or solar panels once they have outlived their usefulness.

Using rideshare or car-sharing services

Perhaps, then, the greenest choice is not to own a car at all.

Maybe.

I used to live in the Chicago area and knew some people who relied entirely on the CTA’s buses and trains to get around town.  One friend had a car for infrequent out-of-town trips. Another was afraid to ride in cars at all!

But nowadays, people can choose Uber or Lyft instead of owning a car. It almost feels the same as public transportation, but it isn’t. Their drivers must keep driving between fares. Therefore, the total gas usage of one of these cars is greater than the combined gas that each rider would have used in his own car.

Companies such as Flexcar, RelayRides, or Zipcar offer cars customers can drive by the hour instead of owning their own. They claim they take cars off the road. If someone sells their car and uses one of these services instead, someone else is driving the old one. So now there are two cars on the road, one with multiple drivers.

But, it appears, most people who use these services didn’t own a car before. They now drive a car for a while instead of taking public transportation or a bicycle.

The net effect of these services is probably somewhat green. Just not nearly as green as their proponents think.

Thinking any product is green

LED bulbs are certainly greener than the old incandescent bulbs, but no one has been able to buy those for several years now. Each LED bulb lasts longer and uses much less electricity.

Unfortunately, people and industry are finding new places to light up. Replacing ten incandescent light bulbs in the house has less environmental benefit if people string up twenty LEDs to light their backyards. And that outdoor lighting causes light pollution. In that case, how are LEDs green products?

Over several decades, improvements in efficiency of industrial activities have always led to growth in consumption that outpaces it.

An innovation might reduce the environmental impact of one unit of something. For example, when an electric company replaces a coal-fired plant with a natural gas plant, each kWh of electricity is cleaner. But if it results in greater consumption of electricity, the total environmental impact might actually increase.

If we recognize that there is no such category as green products, we can devote more attention to reducing our overall consumption of materials and energy. And that’s how to achieve a more sustainable lifestyle.

For additional reading:

There is no such thing as a green product / Trevor Zink and Roland Geyer, Stanford Social Innovation Review. Spring 2016