Lindsay Patterson

You’d have to be living under a coal plant not to notice that the world’s new favorite color is green. It’s stylish to be green, and apparently it’s getting easier and easier to do it.

Hoping to ride the green wave, the Washington Post’s online branch recently launched a new online women’s magazine sweetly called, Sprig. Sprig is well designed and easy to navigate, and it’s tone is that of a girlfriend gossiping over lunch. There’s a daily video, and interviews with various “experts” (standard question: “What’s your eco-sin?”), but mostly the content features stuff you can buy, with commentary of “Why It’s Good” and “Why It’s Green.”

For example: A feature on Chanel Sublimage Eye Essential Regenerating Eye Cream runs under the headline, “Look Younger, Save Madagascar.” According to Sprig, this Chanel product, which goes for $160, is good because it “makes your eyes look brighter—and more importantly, younger—for far less than the cost of going under the knife.” And it’s green because the key ingredient comes from an organic vanilla plant in Madagascar. But even better, says the writer, “..instead of destroying the island’s rainforest to get the ingredient, the company is teaching local employees there sustainable farming and providing them with health care.”

(Does this mean that someone at Chanel is making a decision between destroying the rainforest, and providing education and health care? In any case, I was unable to verify these practices, and I even searched the French-speaking parts of the internet.)

So who is buying $160 eye cream based on its supposed green factor?

“We’re targeting this to the 95 percent of people who want to be 5 percent green,” said Jeanie Pyun, Sprig’s editor in chief. “Not the 5 percent of people who want to be 95 percent green.”

As this article from the New York Times shows, Sprig is more about grabbing an audience and targeting advertisers than reducing your carbon footprint. But there are several shades of green in the movement. This approach to what some call “Lite Green” raises a few questions.

1. Is it good to be 5% green? Is it even possible to be 5% green?

2. Does consuming with the justification of something being labeled “organic” or “60% - 80% recycled” constitute being green?

3. Is Sprig totally missing the mark, or is this a baby step in the direction towards mainstream environmental consciousness?

Conventional wisdom tells us that every little bit counts. So says pop star John Mayer (who is “waiting on the world to change”), advocating “a laid-back, panic free approach to environmentalism” in his own light green manifesto. Don’t think about offsetting your carbon footprint, or hold any rallies, he says. Just change one thing this year, not by next Tuesday.

The reception to this logic on established environmental sites have been leaning towards negative. One commenter on Grist responded to Mayer’s proposal with,

I just have to say, I have never heard such a pathetic, wussy approach to climate change. I mean, I know his music is weak…but ‘light green’???!!! Hell, this isn’t green, it’s feel-good consumerism where you drive your SUV, bring a canvas bag and feel good about yourself.

But non-environmental types are warm to the idea. It sounds pretty easy, after all. And it’s pretty appealing to be able to buy eye cream and save Madagascar at the same time. But does the popularity of being lite green detract from the point of being green at all?