Thinking Green
Building the green city starts with good product information.
The Centre for Urban Ecology is being designed to provide potential consumers and professionals with a survey of sustainable products: all the background information their careful decision-making deserves.
It will provide a comprehensive display on environmental living that will increase consumer confidence and educate generations to come.
The next revolution in how we live is just around the corner: sustainable, energy-efficient housing or renovations that are affordable, attractive and dependable.
But where do homeowners, renovators, planners and builders go to get credible, hands-on information?
More importantly, how do potential homeowners have confidence that company claims regarding a “green product” are accurate?
A report, Environmentally
Conscious Home Buyers, published by the Centre for Design at RMIT,
September 2004) states:
What consumers don’t seem to want is “greenwash.” Greenwash happens when companies allude to ‘general environmental benefits’ of products or services without providing enough detail to verify their claims... Marketers must link consumer choices to specific ecological outcomes, and relate those outcomes to the broader imperative of ecologically sustainable development.
2008.2.19