{"id":53731,"date":"2013-02-06T12:27:30","date_gmt":"2013-02-06T17:27:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=53731"},"modified":"2013-02-06T12:27:30","modified_gmt":"2013-02-06T17:27:30","slug":"greenwashing-water-use-in-vegas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2013\/02\/06\/greenwashing-water-use-in-vegas\/","title":{"rendered":"Greenwashing Water Use in Vegas"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.greenwashingindex.com\/about-greenwashing\/\" target=\"_blank\">Greenwashing<\/a> refers to efforts to <a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2010\/12\/29\/eco-positive-marketing\/\" target=\"_blank\">present products or practices as environmentally friendly<\/a> while making only minimal efforts to really reduce negative environmental impacts.<\/p>\n<p>I saw a great example of this last weekend at a shopping center here in Vegas. As I was walking by a pond and water fountain, I noticed this sign:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2013\/02\/Water.jpg\" data-rel=\"lightbox-image-0\" data-rl_title=\"\" data-rl_caption=\"\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-53732\" title=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2013\/02\/Water-500x509.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"509\" srcset=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2013\/02\/Water-500x509.jpg 500w, https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2013\/02\/Water.jpg 706w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>It has several elements of classic greenwashing. The organization &#8220;cares about the environment and the community&#8221; &#8212; a vague, general claim that commits them to nothing specific. And their supposedly eco-friendly behavior is dubious and hard to evaluate. With Lake Mead (Vegas&#8217;s main drinking water source) depleted from a decade of drought, certainly any efforts to reduce demands on it are welcome.<\/p>\n<p>But that seems like a rather superficial definition of what it means to care about the environment. The imported water comes from somewhere &#8212; an aquifer? another water shed? thousands of bottles of Perrier? &#8212; and it seems it would require energy to get it from there to here. The focus on not using a local water source sidesteps the larger question of whether it is environmentally responsible to build ponds and fountains (and grass-based lawns, for that matter) in the desert, regardless of where the water originates.<\/p>\n<span class=\"ft_signature\"><em>Gwen Sharp is an associate professor of sociology at Nevada State College. You can follow her on Twitter at @gwensharpnv.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Greenwashing refers to efforts to present products or practices as environmentally friendly while making only minimal efforts to really reduce negative environmental impacts. I saw a great example of this last weekend at a shopping center here in Vegas. As I was walking by a pond and water fountain, I noticed this sign: It has [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[23384,2123],"class_list":["post-53731","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-social-construction-discourselanguage","tag-environmentnature"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53731","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53731"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53731\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53733,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53731\/revisions\/53733"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}