All That Glitters is Not "Green"

There is admittedly more interest in so called "environmentally friendly" products than ever before. There's gold in going green (particularly if you advertise it correctly). Products more "green" than others have a certain marketing cachet. Recently, certain brands of bottled water, having taken some hits for the sheer volume of plastic involved in distributing their product, have come out with a smaller cap that uses less plastic. And they do not hesitate to proclaim to the world, or, at least, to their customers, how environmentally conscious they are.

My own company supplies many of our customers with biodegradable materials, which they, in turn, tout to their customers, as environmentally friendly.

But, still, it was not without the teensiest bit of irony that I read the following in an LA Times story about domestic exploration about "rare earths". "Rare earths", for the uninitiated, are so called because...they are rare! And they are used in high tech electronics and sophisticated batteries for powering electric cars...thus saving the environment, don'tcha know?

Consider the following:

...mining for rare earths is difficult and expensive. The elements are usually found scattered in small fragments among rocks and must be separated and then processed. The procedure is rarely eco-friendly, creating hundreds of gallons of salty wastewater per minute, consuming huge amounts of electricity, requiring toxic materials for the refining process and occasionally unearthing dirt that is radioactive.

The high costs and damaging techniques pushed most rare earth mines out of business in the early 1990s. Only China kept its mines going, positioning itself for the ensuing high-tech boom and the resulting rare earth-hungry products.

Energy consuming, toxic waste producing products to save the planet? Sounds like they are in need of some better PR!