The one thing I love about the eco-ethical area are the new words that keep appearing. We already have the 4 R’s, re-cycling, reduce, re-use, repair but now there’s downcycling, precycling and upcycling.Upcycling is applying creativity to someone else’s junk and giving it a make over and a second life. Brands like Junky Styling have been doing it with clothes for a while. There's a trend in Australia where people have been combining unusual fabrics like curtains with old clothes to give them a new lease of life. The results are often trendy and highly fashionable. Sadly the outcome can be shallow greens (a term for people who adopt green as a fashion accessory) paying big bucks to parade about in upcycled clothes trying to look green.Precycling is making a choice in advance to prevent waste, like not buying the latest trendy green bag because it’ll sooner or later end up in landfill. Or buying loose produce so you don’t have any waste packaging.Second Life Packaging is packaging designed for another use afterwards, like Gu pots.Hypermiling is not a drug induced state but a way of driving to reduce fuel consumption.Terms like ‘make do and mend’ and ‘waste not want not’ and other war time terms are starting to make a comeback. Nothing like recycling old language, especially when we at least understanding it unlike many modern terms.Then there are those words and phrases that seem to fade out of fashion like Acid Rain and CFC (Chlorofluorocarbon) or have been replace with confusing terms. Green house effect has been replaced with global warming and pollution with carbon footprint. Trouble is there are too many science based terms which leave the consumer puzzled and therefore disengaged. What we need is consumer friendly vocabulary. As I mentioned in a previous blog, when we were doing one survey one consumer when asked what carbon foorprint was thought is was the carbon they put in an urn after you’ve been cremated. It’s not such a dumb answer really.One term I love is ‘Vampire Power’ that’s the power electronic items (like your phone charger) use when left on standby. It’s actually one of the least offenders in your home, your fridge if frozen up, a light left on for an hour, an extra cup of tea will consumer far more electricity. The danger of making consumers think that by just turning off the standby they will save the planet is dangerous and results in them sitting back in their over lit, over heated living rooms and thinking “job done”.But for real cool try ‘ecosexy’. It refers to any product or company that is ecologically sustainable, socially responsible and cool. No surprise it comes from Australia.A harder to digest word is ‘photovoltaic’, it’s some scientific term relating to solar panels. Then there’s ‘day lighting’ – designing buildings to use the maximum sunlight. ‘Grey water’ sounds as unattractive as it actually is, that’s using used bath or washing up water for another use.Sandbag, is an organisation dedicated to the climate change issue likes to use consumer friendly words like pollution and greenhouse gases (because people actually get that). The Sandbag site is great fun and uses humour and comedian Marek Larwood. One example is their use of biscuits to demonstrate carbon trading (look up Sandbag on TouTube). They also blow away the vegan argument about cows being anti-environmental. A refreshing change to the over serious depressing po faced campaigns by people like Gore.Out of fashion are eco-bags – too many and very boring. Have you bought your “oh no not another green slogan on a bag” bag yet? Electric cars and home wind turbines, are also out in fashion is sharing, from Freecycle to the more trendy PSS, product service systems. These provide a mix of service and product and usually provide a reduction of material consumption.Many believe it will improve eco-efficiency by what is termed "factor 4"…I won’t bore you with the rest, look it up on Wiki.There’s an innovative recycling idea from Oxfam, working with Marks & Spencer they are offering M&S vouchers to shoppers who recycle old curtains, cushions, throws and bed linen. The M&S and Oxfam Soft Furnishings Exchange is designed to raise money while reducing the amount of textiles sent to landfill. (Few people are aware that clothes and fabrics make up a significant percentage of landfill.) This idea deserves a new term, maybe ‘cash for crap’ or ‘curtains to poverty’.Finally, we’ve seen new phrases join the language like ‘five a day’ (for students reading this that means fruit not pints of beer). Check out ‘Fresh Fruit? - Laura Ben and Him ITV2’ on YouTube, very funny sketch that takes the mick out of five a day.http://www.sandbag.org.uk/http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNUabVPfNLc&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Esandbag%2Eorg%2Euk%2Fpress&feature=player_embeddedhttp://planetgreen.discovery.comhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9X_OqHoMKyU&NR=1www.ecoethicalmarketing.infohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_service_system
Have you come across any odd, interesting or barmy eco words? What about one you've made up.
i think you've just made enough up for all of us.
seriously, who conjures up these most pointless of terms? Precycling?? Where's the 'cycle' in not using something? What a waste of time to think these up.
Plenty of words around in relation to the above article...mostly anglo-saxon
" ‘Grey water’ sounds as unattractive as it actually is, that’s using used bath or washing up water for another use. "
If the above practice is a recycling method, then I believe I've found a very early recycling enthusiast - Saint Brigid of Kildare, Ireland. Either born or baptised into Christianity in 468AD.
According to Stephen Fry on an episode of IQ, she performed a regular miracle by turning her dirty bath water into none other than BEER ! Now, that's what I call recycling !!
Pingback from links for 2009-07-23 « Francis Anderson
Hi Chris,
This reminds me of one of my Psychology tutor-marked assignments where there were so many specialists terms to remember, we were issued with our own dictionary for the course. Most of my time was spent fathoming out and trying to remember which term meant what rather than getting to the point of it all.
My first encounter with 'Photovoltaic' aka fuel cells aka (batteries) was whilst researching Global warming aka climate change aka upcycling. It's when you start talking 'energy renewables' (atomic) that my mind just finally ceased-up under the plethora of scientific terminology.
However !!!! leaving all that behind, (having sleep-read through a load of scientific journals) I can sincerely say, science is making a real effort to bring us a truly functional electric car. The only thing is, it is so silent, they will have to manufacture noise (pollution) to prevent people from being knocked-down in the street by it because you cannot hear it coming.
You are all lucky, I spared you a lot of really barmy terms. And they seem to be being invented one a day. Worse than the internet for jargon.
So what's the answer Chris? Crazy as it may seem, perhaps it's good news because a language only changes when it is being used. Of course it's preferrrable if we can all understand it too...perhaps we should construct a Periodic Table for global warming based on the elements required to achieve our goal of a sustainable world where we can all live in harmony.
CHRIS ARNOLD
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