Greenwash
JUST OVER A MONTH AGO, an American bank announced that it had built what it is billing as the largest Green Wall in North America. I have majorly mixed feelings about this new development. On the one hand, it gives green walls great visibility; many more people will come to know of living walls and their beneficial qualities because of this huge installation. On the other hand, this bank has chosen to feature its corporate logo as a graphical element on the green wall itself, by tracing the logo’s outline using plant varieties of different colours. This has the potential to create disinformation in two ways: one, it can confuse the general population about ecological systems and the way they work; and two, it can obfuscate the truth about the actual business practices of this bank, and their effects on the American economy. Because of this ambivalence, I have included photographs of the giant green wall, but with their corporate logos digitally blurred out.
GREEN APPLE is the name of the landscaping company that you contract to modify and enhance the visible physical features of the land around your home or place of business. For us, Green Apple is the container that allows us to do work in the world that reflects our ethics and morals and provides us with living wages. It is no exaggeration to say that at Green Apple, we hold dear all of the biota, including the non-human life forms: flora, fauna and the precious planetary organism itself. I don’t mean that we place a value on other species because they can be of use to us; I mean that we see them all as equal partners in the cosmic capoeira, the spiral dance of life on Earth.
