Allison Arieff posts in her By Design blog for the New York Times about the SB08 conference on sustainable design. I find her observations to be spot-on, including this comment:

Making more stuff — no matter how green that stuff is — will not really help combat global warming or reduce our collective carbon footprint. Companies need to produce things and need to make money by selling them — understood — but to me, the idea of simply creating more (albeit greener) product is pretty much on par with lowering gas prices as a solution to skyrocketing oil costs. When will we consider behavior? When we will commit to innovation?

Personally, I applaud when companies produce green products—but I cringe when they produce these green products in addition to, not in lieu of, their other offerings. Take Clorox's new GreenWorks line of natural cleaning products. Not only are they manufacturing, bottling, boxing, shipping and selling these new nontoxic items, but they're still manufacturing, bottling, boxing, shipping and selling all the old ones. So instead of a real sea change, it reads as a bad attempt to take on method.

And here's the rub for designers: Sure, we can spec FSC-certified paper (which is itself a less green option than 100% recycled) and soy inks. But when will we have the guts to urge our clients not to print the job at all?