Preserve founder Eric Hudson in an interview with Living Principles team explains what it means to create environment friendly product from start to finish. Green idea such as “Mail Back Pack” for the Preserve toothbrush added impact on environment which was not considered in Preserve’s design.  Being green in one aspect (decreasing the amount of material in the primary package) sometimes impact environment in some other aspect (need for sturdy secondary package). Eric calls this as ” Law of Unintended Consequences”. I appreciate when founder clearly knows, acknowledges, and willing to fix  flaws in being green from start to finish.

The interview reminds me “Dust to Dust” automotive energy report by CNW. In 2006 when CNW claimed that Jeep Wrangler is the greenest car well ahead of hybrid cars, their report created lot of controversy. Wrangler is still in top 5 green cars in CNW’s subsequent reports. One can argue some assumptions in these reports however CNW’s approach to consider energy necessary to plan, build, sell, drive, and dispose of a vehicle to scrap not just looking at environment impact during “drive” phase is important.  Bottom line we need to question ourselves all the time when we see word green, are we subscribing to fad or we really understand it.