This link has been bookmarked by 2 people . It was first bookmarked on 28 May 2009, by Will Richardson.
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17 Mar 10
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The sad fact is that what we see in the store, what we put in our homes, what we use every day, all those objects, all those friendly products that we're so used to, has a hidden legacy which has to do with their impacts on the environment, on our health, on ecosystems, on the people that made them, that starts from the moment that they start to extract the ingredients. Manufacture through transport, through use, disposal. At every stage in that progression, over the life cycle of a product, there's a new methodology. It's called life cycle assessment.
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manufacturing, to 1,959 discreet steps.
At every step of the way there are myriad impacts on the environment, on health, on the people involved, and so on. So, first, we have a vaster sense, and a much more accurate sense, of really what the impact is. And the second thing is, and this is the big breakthrough, that information is now available to you and me while we're shopping. So that we can use it to make better decisions.
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Well, here's the lovely thing. You only need to do it once. You know, you- take your shopping. Just think about it. The things you buy every week, the things you buy every month, they're probably the same — I know it's true for me. I buy the same brands week after week after week. Now you can check them out and you can compare them. Just take the ten things you buy most often, spend ten minutes on GoodGuide, and you can upgrade your impacts.
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Well, I think it's a little different, Bill. What's happened with our products and things we buy, is that we have what's called in economics an asymmetry.
That means that sellers know things buyers don't. We just experienced a meltdown in the economy because there were toxic assets. And banks were buying things that they didn't realize what they were, and they were poisonous.
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GoodGuide you can do two things that are spectacular. One is you can, in a single click, tell the company why you're not buying their brand anymore, or why you are now buying their brand.
This is very powerful information. You can also inform all of your friends as to why you've just done that. As this information spreads virally what's going to happen, and companies see this coming, is that this kind of ecological goodness is going to matter for market share.
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Well, let me reassure you. Everything that we've done that's green is to the good, you know. I recycle my papers and plastics. And I try to get the green product. But once you realize, through the lens of the life cycle assessment, that every product has 1,000 environmental health, social impacts, and you see that what we call green has taken one of those, one slice and improved it, there's still the 999 other things that we need to get better. The stuff we have now is a legacy of innovations and inventions from a very innocent time when nobody thought about ecological impacts.
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riddle of the chariot comes from the 5th century, from an obscure text in India. But what it says is this. It poses the question: where is the chariot? Is it in its wheel? In the frame? In the rods that connect it to the horse? It's not in any one of those. It is an aggregate of parts.
And the metaphor here is that any product is not a single thing here. It has a back story. It's an aggregate. It's an assembly. And that assembly includes the impacts along the way. So we've got to expand our thinking about the stuff we buy. Because it has a history that could be better going into the future if we vote with our dollars.
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28 May 09
Will RichardsonBILL MOYERS: When I finished your book, I wrote down what I took to be your message. Here it is. The things we buy and use come usually with a hidden price tag. And if we don't read that hidden price tag our children and grandchildren face a disaster. Fai
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BILL MOYERS: When I finished your book, I wrote down what I took to be your message. Here it is. The things we buy and use come usually with a hidden price tag. And if we don't read that hidden price tag our children and grandchildren face a disaster. Fair enough?
DANIEL GOLEMAN: I think that's well put. The sad fact is that what we see in the store, what we put in our homes, what we use every day, all those objects, all those friendly products that we're so used to, has a hidden legacy which has to do with their impacts on the environment, on our health, on ecosystems, on the people that made them, that starts from the moment that they start to extract the ingredients. Manufacture through transport, through use, disposal. At every stage in that progression, over the life cycle of a product, there's a new methodology. It's called life cycle assessment.
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that information is now available to you and me while we're shopping.
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