Sustainable, just plain silly!

Just another catch phrase to sell products!


The word sustainable has become so pervasive that its usage is often just plain silly. Colgate recently purchased a company that makes sustainable toothpaste. It contains bone powder. Does an intelligent person really think that it's unsustainable to make toothpaste any other way?

Sustainable tourism is being marketed everywhere. It usually describes destinations where the attractions are generally undeveloped, like the Amazon. It is really unsustainable to vacation in developed destinations like Paris or Tokyo?

Sustainable economics are particularly bizarre. Google the term, and you'll find that it's used largely to refer to wealth redistribution. Has communism really proven to be more sustainable than capitalism?

A prominent automotive magazine recently tested four "sustainable sport sedans". Are four cars that get marginally better gas mileage than other similar cars — none of which are particularly great — honestly the only type of vehicles whose production can be sustained?

Sustainable music is also all over the Internet. In one case, it means the guy makes his own instruments. Is "sustainable" really the word that best describes that? Playing an instrument someone else made is not sustainable? In other cases, it refers to songs about anticorporatism. Is it truly impossible to sustain the playing of music about other themes?

I found a web site offering sustainable real estate. Two of the houses were built of corn cobs and hay bales (I wish I was making this up). I'll ask the Big Bad Wolf how sustainable that type of engineering is.



http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4005
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