Going Green - Tips and Ideas

Meghan: Trends are what to find in our times. Some hang around for a while, others quickly fade away and every once in a while you find a trend so good, you want it last. Going green seems to be super trendy these days. I do not know if you have noticed but everywhere I look, I seem to find things that are supposedly green and it is all but confusing me because one, I do not even know what green is and second, why should I even be going green? Luckily, I cannot think about a better place to learn about green than at one of the trendiest stores in Hollywood. I mean, when you look up this place on Wikipedia, it says that it is synonymous with hip so I do not even know if I should be going in there but we are because we have been invited to see behind the scenes as Fred Segal goes green and you know, this should be really cool. Before I could have my coolness measured inside Fred Segal, I have to meet up with Blayde Penza, one of the founding members of the L.A. Green Consortium. I have already met Blayde two days before when visiting a shop to learn all there was to know about concrete but today was a little different because instead of talking about a material, we were talking about a concept. What is the LA Green Consortium? Blayde: The LA Green Consortium is just a group of individuals that have come together to try to help to identify what green is and what designing green is. Meghan: That is good because what is green? I think I don’t even know what it is. Blayde: That is a good question. That is typically what people will ask when they hear the word green. In my mind I am really not the expert on the subject but in my mind, it is really just the ability to choose products that have less of an impact on the environment. There is no perfect green product, nothing is totally green and has no impact on the environment. Everything has some impact. It is making the right, conscious intelligent choices to choose the product that have less of an impact. That is what green is. Meghan: At last, someone gave me an answer that made sense. In this constant stream of green, green, green, it is right to hear someone say the truth. Going green is simply choosing materials that are less harmful than others but as Blayde said, he is not the expert. Now who are we going to meet when we go in here? Blayde: We are going to meet Deborah with epOxyGreen. Meghan: All right. Blayde: And she is an industry expert on green. Meghan: Between calling it the store epOxyGreen, which offers green building and design products, being a founder of the L.A. Green Consortium, acting as a green consultant. Oh! And having a last name Green, yes her name is Deborah Guyer Greene. You could say that Deborah knows what it means to be green and thankfully, that it is easy to get tired of being green. Deborah: I think the unfortunate thing about green becoming such a buzz word is that it is so much of a buzz word that sometimes you forget or the consumer may get tired with it. that is my fear with it. Meghan: Oh no, yes it is real. Deborah: It has already happened. Meghan: It is a reality, yes. In reality, I lived with quite sometime which you can call ego fatigue. I was tired of seeing green everywhere. I already took my recycled plastic bags with me when I went shopping. Switched out my normal bulbs for efficient ones, started using recycled paper and less harmful cleaners. I did not mean to keep being told to go green. I had already started. But being in Fred Segal, I am here in Deborah’s plans to help Fred Segal green go green. What is helping to renew my statement about going green although not enough to keep me from expressing my frustration? All right, this is going to sound weird but I always feel like I am a little kid who is being told by a parent “Oh go green.” And then they say—and I ask why and they just say “Because I said so.” Deborah: Right. Meghan: And there is never ever a reason for why to go green. So what is that reason, why should we be going green? Deborah: Again, I keep wanting to change it from green to just quality. It