LC: Green Home believes that Americans buy products based upon price, quality and availability. We believe that a significant percentage of consumers would base their purchases upon a fourth decision-making axis. This fourth axis may be the product's impact on their own environment or on the general environment - it may be ethical or value-based criteria, health-based criteria or green-based criteria. Other retailers may have failed to address this fourth axis because it is difficult to define. But a philosophical approach to solving this problem will allow us to own the space of that fourth decision-making axis.

We currently say it this way, "Green Home's mission is simply to provide consumers with one additional criterion for selecting products - environmental quality". This may too specifically define that fourth criterion. We may want to open it up in an effort to be more accurate.

JG: In the first section, we should add something about sustainability and biodegradability for cleaning products - not all of these criteria are going to apply to all products.

MM: Biodegradbility would be lumped under toxicity in use. These specific terms will come up later as we get into greater detail about the Testing and Certification policy.

CG: The terms listed (like sustainability) are umbrella term

SS: Some of these weigh more heavily than others but the most important is reduced toxicity.

LC: (Agrees) Reduced toxicity is listed first and foremost - it will help drive people to the site because people are concerned about toxicity. Then we will grow into everything else - building a bridge between "your environment" and the overall environment. One of the phrases that we are going to use that links these ideas very well is "It's your environment". It's like saying "it's your life."

JG and LMH: Both believe that reduced toxicity is NOT the most important criteria among consumers. JG finds that more people ask about recycled content than anything else.

MM: He also loves recycled content products. People may not be able to relate to saving the rainforest but they may have a landfill nearby.

JG: They get more calls from people who want to not use trees more than any other kind of call we get. There are two audiences - the first audience is not the one we are after, it is the audience that we are.

LC: And we'll never get the audience we want if we cannot get the audience we are. As it happens, most of the personal care / self-interest issues are NOT contradictory with larger environmental issues. Even if a person is coming from only one perspective - Green Home can be the place that these groups of people come together. No matter which market is bigger - combined they are bigger still.

SS: The question to ask is if it is fear-based on both ends. Reduced toxicity is clearly fear-based. Are people who are not pre-disposed to buying environmental products now going to buy these products because of fear or because they want to help the environment?

Susie likes bio-based products even more than recycled products...

LC: Finishing up on the philosophy, I think we agree that Green Home does not make specific recommendations and does not claim to provide the definitive answer on what is or is not green. Green Home is a resource where consumers can find answers to these questions and define their own fourth criterion. This is a good place to start.

JG: The mission statement says that the 4th dimension is environmental quality - but LC interpreted it as social responsibility. These concepts are not antagonistic but they are different. John suggests (in reference to the diagram of circles) that we are rigorous and articulate about what constitutes the barrier between IN and OUT of the circle of green. The barrier issue should be green - it should touch on one of these (round "0" criteria) issues. If a product is not environmentally responsible, it is out of the circle.

A good example of this is full-spectrum incandescent bulbs. They are healthy, supposed to be good for you, but they are terrible for the environment (they use incredible amounts of energy and right now, energy is toxicity). It would fall outside of the circle and we would not carry them.

MM: If you take that rigor to extremes, however, you could make an argument FOR child labor. It is incredibly efficient but it is wrong .

JG: The question is where do you put in the child labor issue. Once a product is within the circle - then it becomes evaluated in terms of the "dial" or "filter" to consider issues such as child labor. Once you have limited the universe, the rest becomes customer choice and can be customer driven. You can provide information about the products within the circle (about things like child labor) and allow the customer to choose based upon this information.

LC: He proposes, for the purposes of going forward, that there is a strict and a general definition of green. The strict definition may not involve health, but in a broader sense, green can be an attitude - an approach to life. We are going to expand the definition. The key is to know what we are doing. We need to talk about green in a way that does not become too narrowly defined .

SS: It is not an exact science. You have to ask what the MOST important thing is first.

LC: Let's agree that there may be a stricter definition of green and that there may be products that we carry that do not fall into this definition.

CG: Most people who come into the Green Resource Center may have gotten interested because of larger environmental concerns are looking for non-toxic paints, carpets that don't off-gas, etc. They are coming from the healthy angle. From studying baubiologie she would recommend the non-energy efficient light bulb that John mentioned as not green because it has important heath benefits. She is interested in reduced toxicity and in expanding the definition of green to include products that are health-related as long as consumers are educated as to the benefits and downsides of these products.

LC: There is no such thing as a perfectly green product. Because defining green is an imperfect science it is even more important where we draw the line. We may have a green meter and a health meter on the site.

SS: It is also important where the consumer draws the line. We may let the customer choose between a full-spectrum incandescent bulb, a compact fluorescent AND a full spectrum compact fluorescent .

LC: We may have a "green meter" and a "health meter" and trade them off of each other.

CG: A product may be low on the green but high on the health. SS: This brings up the important issue of where health meets green and how they relate to each other. The government is still trying to work this one out. LC: Even after we are funded, making these determinations will take more resources than we will have to do it. We are going to have to be wise about the way that we set-up our system. We could waste a lot of money measuring, analyzing and comparing or we could develop a system that is largely intuitive and still somewhat scientifically-based that allows us to get the products out there (probably with the green and health rating systems we are discussing).

LMH: When she wrote her book in 86 she called it "The Healthy Home" because people did not understand the idea of "green".. Since it was published in 1989 the book became categorized as not "green" but health-related. People who only know her by the book tend to see her as health-related and not green.

We need to look to the past to see what green has meant where it started (Norway, Germany, Sweden). Then we need to look to people here who define themselves as green (and are knowledgeable in the field) to understand what the state of the definition currently. We also need to look into the future to try to figure out of there is something that may happen to change the word green. We don't wan to be caught using a word with negative connotations, nor do we want the word to exclude something that may become a major force in consumer purchasing.

In Linda's own view, green has always meant sustainable . Marc Mowrey agrees that "sustainable" is about as good as a one-word definition as any.

SS: We do need to look at how other people have defined green. The government has certainly tried and compared it to definitions made by other countries (Susie has information with her about this). But we also need to ask why this has not reached out to the mainstream market.

LMH: When we re-do her book, we may want to call it Green Home - she wishes she had.

LC: There is a magazine called Natural Home who did research that said green was negative - it meant Green Party, hippies, lefty, political and didn't get your toilet clean. That's not what America wants and we're not here to judge America, we're here to work with America. However, we feel that natural has new-age, unreliable connotations.

SS: It seems deceitful and means nothing.

LC: There are a lot of words out there none of which are perfect but because green has meant so many things over the years and because nothing else is better - it is still up for grabs. We have an opportunity to define the term ourselves. We can start with a traditional definition and expand it to include things like social responsibility .

JG: He still has problems with this and it does not have to do with the definition of green. His point is that the actual definition is not as important as is the fact that there needs to BE an absolute, rigorously established definition.

This definition could include health - but that would have to be included in the definition. GreenCo. Tries to remedy what consumption has screwed up in the environment (to the extent that it is possible by consuming things). Green Co. could carry a lot more green products - there is a huge universe out there. (John refers to visual features of the diagram) Some products would have health benefits only, some green benefits only, and some would fall into both categories. But if you add health, you have to clearly define the criteria for choosing healthy products .

LC: (referring to features of the diagram illustrating a center circle of "green" as we have defined it now with many possible overlapping layers that could also be part of our criteria) There are products with environmental attributes (purple marker on the butcher paper), products with health attributes, products that are socially responsible. Green Home selects its products based upon all of these criteria - this is what makes up the fourth criterion. We should discuss what we want to call these, but it is a good place to start. (John agrees)