Article: The right choices

Tuesday August 4, 2009

Review by TAN CHENG LI

Ecological Intelligence
Author: Daniel Goleman
Publisher: Allen Lane, 276 pages

COTTON fabric is often preferred over synthetic, but did you know that cotton farming is highly water and pesticide-intensive? Some 10,000 litres of water are required to grow the cotton for one bag and cotton crops alone account for the use of about 10% of the world's pesticides.

Cotton yarn also gets bleached, dyed, and finished with industrial chemicals that include chromium, chlorine and formaldehyde, each toxic in its own way, as well as leave behind foul wastewater. And the dyes used might put factory workers at risk of leukaemia.

That's just one of the many illuminating alerts in Daniel Goleman's Ecological Intelligence. He rightly points out that our green thinking is often one-dimensional, focusing on single problems in isolation from the rest. This superficial green awareness can end up doing more harm than good as it ignores the adverse impact of the stuff we buy.

Goleman wants us to know that our world of material abundance comes with a hidden price tag which most of us are ignorant of. It's time to change that if we want to protect our well-being and that of the planet.

Sure, most of us want to make the right choices as consumers but, what are the right choices? We've been told that glass packaging is better than PET (polyethylene terephthalate) plastic since glass can be recycled many times whereas PET is usually discarded. But then when you make glass, you have to heat silica and soda ash at 1,100°C. What's being emitted in the air? What chemicals are people being exposed to? What is the energy use and what is the contribution to global warming? If you knew all that, would you still opt for the glass bottle?

Faced with such dilemmas, making earth-friendly choices becomes tricky. More so when consumers are often left in the dark over the detrimental effects of producing, packaging, shipping, distributing and discarding the goods they buy.

And more often than not, manufacturers themselves too are unaware – and unbothered – about the impact of what they make. But we should be concerned as studies have shown that our bodies carry a stew of chemicals, thanks to a lifetime of exposure to small amounts of these stuff.

To cut through the eco-conundrums, Goleman says we need to train ourselves to think differently and to learn about the environmental cost of everything. He calls this knowledge "ecological intelligence".

To guide consumers along, a new field called industrial ecology has emerged, in which engineers, chemists, physicists, biologists, ecologists and green activists alike have gotten together to compile complete information about all aspects of a product's history.

This is done through life-cycle analyses, which unveil the hidden impact of things from the moment the ingredients are extracted or concocted, through manufacture, packaging, storage, transportation, retail, use and disposal.

Goleman gives an example: one such analysis reveals that a glass bottle requires 1,959 steps from birth to disposal, each of which can be analysed for its impact – from particles emitted in the air, water and soil to the energy footprint and the incidence of cancer.

Not all products have been analysed but many have, and the information on their environmental and health impact is accessible in websites such as www.cosmeticsdatabase.com and www.goodguide.com.

Goleman, who wrote the 1995 best-seller Emotional Intelligence, writes that this "radical transparency" in information will help consumers make smarter purchasing decisions and this will eventually drive companies to change the way they make things.

Goleman also points out that "green" is an illusion once you understand life-cycle analysis. Take, for instance, the current craze for all things green. It can lull us into thinking that we're doing our part for the planet, ignorant of the fact that anything that is made will leave a mark.

As one industrial ecologist told Goleman: "The term 'eco- friendly' should not ever be used. Anything manufactured is only relatively so."

Goleman also highlights that most so-called green products are ecologically virtuous only in some aspects. One example: the office printer claims to be energy efficient but nothing is said about its impact on indoor air quality or its incompatibility with recycled printer cartridges or recycled paper.

That is just one of the many green myths shattered by Goleman. Here's another: imported meat is not always bad. Scientists at Lincoln University in New Zealand calculates that lamb from New Zealand shipped to Britain has a carbon footprint just one-fourth that of British lamb – in part because most electricity in New Zealand comes from renewable sources, and ample rain and sun means pastures need less fertiliser there than in cloudy Britain.

Much of what Goleman talks about is not new, having been espoused by other ecologists. But he has synthesised current environmental thinking into one book. And this is a good book to pick up should you want to expand your green wisdom.

But mind you, it is a tedious read as not only does it brim with information, Goleman does repeat some points and relies a lot on jargon. But this book is certainly thought-provoking and has plenty of interesting ideas – I found myself stopping every few paragraphs to mull them over.

Ecological intelligence is ultimately about more than what we buy. Goleman quotes John Ehrenfeld, executive director of the International Society for Industrial Ecology, who calls for product innovations that "radically reduce the amount of stuff that humans all over the globe use to produce well-being."

So while buying greener is good, buying less is even better. And since it would be impossible for industrial ecologists to do a life-cycle analysis for every single product made, manufacturers should be responsible and design goods based on the "cradle to cradle" concept to prevent fouling up our bodies and our environment. After all, it is their children and grandchildren – not just ours – who will be inheriting this planet.

This article was taken from: The Star Online: Go Green Live Green 4 August 2009