Little Green Lies—How Companies Erect an Eco-Facade (original) (raw)

* Illustration: Lamosca * Comcast Ecobill
Slogan: PaperLESSisMORE
__Reality Check: __ Sparing trees is nice, but we suspect the cable behemoth's practice of carpet bombing potential customers with direct-marketing brochures--often after they've already signed up--might offset the benefits. Can't Comcast just spam people? After all, it works for those environmentally minded v1agr@ sellers.

Poland Spring Eco-Shape bottle
Slogan: A little natural does a lot of good.
__Reality Check: __ How does selling more H2O in a bottle made of recycled plastic qualify as doing "a lot of good"? Eight out of 10 empties are landfilled anyway, and producing and shipping the 31.8 billion liters of water sold in the US every year requires 17 million barrels of oil. Tap water, anyone?

Airbus A380
Slogan: A better environment inside and out.
__Reality Check: __ Reducing the carbon footprint per passenger by hauling more of them at a time makes sense. But unless the aviation industry switches to some magic new fuel, it will be spewing 1.4 billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere per year by 2025. That's gotta make Mother Nature cry, inside and out.

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