Friday, June 4, 2010

Attention to all aspiring designers!

Green is not so "green"
Posted by Paola from www.livegreenblog.com

In today’s world, “green” has become nearly synonymous with “sustainable” or “natural.” Whether we are discussing “green design,” “green energy,” “green architecture,” or “green” something else, the word “green” – the color of nature, evoking lush vegetation and rolling fields – is supposed to indicate environmental responsibility.

And while nature offers us beautiful greens of all shades, the ironic truth is that reproducing them ourselves can harm the environment more than any other color. In the words of German chemist Michael Braungart, “Green can never be green because of the way it is made.” This means that green-colored plastic and paper cannot be recycled or composted safely, because they could contaminate everything else. The problem stems from the difficulties involved in manufacturing the color green, often resolved using toxic substances to stabilize it.

Take Pigment Green 7, the most common shade of green used in plastics and paper. It is an organic pigment but contains chlorine, some forms of which can cause cancer and birth defects. Another popular shade, Pigment Green 36, includes potentially hazardous bromide atoms as well as chlorine; while inorganic Pigment Green 50 is a toxic mix of cobalt, titanium, nickel and zinc oxide.

Some early green paints were so corrosive that they ate away canvas, paper and wood. Many popular 18th- and 19th-century green wallpapers and paints were made with arsenic, and could have fatal consequences. Some historians believe one such paint to be responsible for the death of Napoleon Bonaparte in 1821, when lethal arsenic fumes were released from the rotting green and gold wallpaper in his musty cell on the island of Saint Helena.

Even today, despite all of the advances in color technology, producing green dyes and pigments is still problematic. Next time you’re tempted to buy something in any shade of green, make a “green” choice: choose red.