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The Ecomorons Greenwashing Award for January goes to the café at the De Young Museum in San Francisco.

This is why: I asked for a coffee at the counter. The woman behind it wordlessly passed me a paper cup. And the paper cup had these words printed on it:

I repeat: For a sustainable future.

What a nice touch to write this on a disposable item. This is one of the most elegant greenwashing jobs Ecomorons.org has witnessed so far. Congrats, De Young Café!

There is more. While sipping my drink I noticed signs on all the tables. Under the headline “The capacity of our planet is not limitless” they stated:

We are very mindful of the impact we are making on our environment and our intention is to tread lightly on our planet. (…) In the café, we use china every day to serve you and we encourage you to use paper only when you are eating outside of the café.

I looked around and saw that all guests who had sat down indoors with drinks were using paper cups. Then I looked around even more and my eagle eyes detected a neat row of porcelain mugs on a shelf in the staff-only area behind one of the counters. I assume they keep them up there as decoration. Which is a wise decision, because that way they’ll never break.

(photos: Marshall Astor via Flickr, Backhouse Images)

BREAKING NEWS – The Ecomorons Greenwashing award for the month of December goes to the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) and their Holiday Light Festival. Congratulations!

What is the Light Festival?
The annual event consists of multiple displays made of light bulbs and LEDs that mainly depict local landmarks, such as Griffith Observatory, City Hall and the Los Angeles aqueduct. For almost six weeks during the holiday season these illuminate a one-mile stretch of Crystal Springs Drive at the base of Griffith Park.

Why do the organizers get an award?
For giving a whole new meaning to the term “green”, which they very creatively used on the Light Festival website in this context:

To demonstrate our commitment to a “greener” LA, the Holiday Light Festival will be a pedestrian only event from November 21 through November 25.

So the LADWP made the Festival pedestrian-friendly on 5 out of 40 nights?
Yepp. And their thoughtful commitment extends even further. The LADWP managed to have bicyclists banned from Crystal Springs Drive – a public road – for the duration of the event. (Cyclists were allowed one sneak preview on a solitary night before the official opening of the Festival.)

How much greener can you get?
A lot. The LADWP also encouraged Angelenos to view the displays from their slowly moving cars, edging along in bumper-to-bumper traffic and clogging up the whole neighborhood.

Sounds great! How did the LADWP achieve that?
By making walking as unpleasant as possible. Pedestrians had to hike next to the event-related traffic jam, on the opposite side of the street from the lights displays. Again, we would like to thank the LADWP for making this Holiday season greener then ever.

Was there an Honorable Mention in the Greenwashing Award for December?
Yeah, the LADWP snatched that one up, too, for providing us with the following info about the above mentioned Light Festival on the Festival website:

This festival symbolizes LADWP’s proud history and shared legacy of service to the people of the city.

Now, the jury couldn’t find anyone with the ability to explain what a “shared legacy of service” is. But we are all the more certain about the meaning of the phrase “proud history”. And the proud history of the LADWP conjures up the image of the dusty bed of Owens Lake (dry due to historic LADWP activities instigated in the early 20th century by William Mulholland, who got his own celebratory display at December’s event). Pondering LADWP history, we also vaguely remember that the complete destruction of the Mono Lake ecosystem (courtesy of the water diversions of the LADWP) could only be stopped via court order. We congratulate the LADWP to its proud history as well as to its Honorable Mention!

O.k. – just one more: the Special Additional Greenwashing Commendation for December goes to…
…the LADWP! They owe their unprecedented winning streak to one further unique feature on their company website: a rather curious article about Mulholland’s life and achievements, which neither mentions his questionable methods of acquiring water rights in the Owens Valley, nor his collapsed St. Francis Dam that caused 450 deaths and the end of his career in the year 1928.

For more rants about the Holiday Light Festival, see IlluminateLA, here and here. And an op-ed piece by L.J. Williamson in the L.A. Times.

(photos: “Going Green” by Melissa Acedera – check out her photo blog Melle Music; “LADWP Arch” by Chester Paul Sgroi; “God Bless America” by Raphael Mazor via Flickr)

The original post was modified on January 4, 2008. For aesthetic reasons the original arch/traffic jam image was replaced by the one you can see now.

BREAKING NEWS – Our monthly Ecomoron Greenwashing Award for November goes to the company T3 Motion in Costa Mesa, CA. They are the manufacturer of the T3 personal vehicle (pictured above) which runs on rechargeable batteries – or, in the company’s words, “clean energy”. Congrats, guys!
The T3 trike has been featured in this blog as a vehicle that enables the officers of the Los Angeles Police Department to move at the speed of a cyclist, but without burning any calories.
So what made our jury pick T3 Motion for the prestigeous greenwashing award? It was the surprising yet prominent environmental claim on the company website, delivered with admirable chutzpah:

Clean Energy: At T3 Motion, Inc., we believe that our technology should be a benefit to both our professional end-users and the environment. Our zero gas emissions all-electric vehicle – the T3 Series – proves clean energy can also be cost-effective.

Our experts at the Ecomorons offices did of course put the company’s statements about clean energy to a test. The result is utterly surprising. See for yourself:

There is definitely no air pollution spewing out of this socket. Zero exhaust!
Just to make sure, we also used a second means of evaluation. We went to the California Energy Commission website for more info. The statistics there point out that 48 percent of electricity sold by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power in 2006 was generated by coal power plants. The weird thing is: We always thought burning coal was dirty! We have to thank T3 Motion for setting us straight. Again, all the best to our zero emission innovators from Orange County!

(photos: PR Newswire Photo Service, Backhouse Images)