Beware 'Greenwasing'

Spouting that infuriating call-to-mediocrity, “why?”, the restrained middle has too often heckled the freer-spirited margin. But once the idea of growing grass on my van’s roof took root, it became instead a question of “why not?” And this reversal made me happy, for our society has long been defined by the boring and the templated – this project would enable me to overturn that balance.

Conceptualising and constructing it proved even more fun. Industrial design met legend. The name I gave the grass-topped van, The Daedalus Sunseeker, drew from the Greek story of a master designer who constructed wings out of wax for himself and his son, to escape by flight from a tower where they were held prisoner. His impetuous son Icarus, despite his father’s warnings, flew too exuberantly, too close to the sun. Icarus’ wax wings melted and he fell; Daedalus survived and his legend embodies skilled contraption making.

Less exotic but hopefully equal in innovation is the grass roof: a mobile shade, giving me wings to fly from the sun’s wrath. From my limited industrial design experience I contrived the contraption by screwing into the van’s bicycle rack holes two rails, holding down eight trays fashioned from powder-coated chicken wire, containing carpet grass grown on a soilless substrate.

On the environmental front it attracts the most comments, that it helps cool the van and saves on air-conditioning. They are right; I had the same pretentions towards being green. Ah, the G word. One after F, it still rings as vulgar. Here’s the secret: The Sunseeker is not really green. This is where I believe it can deliver the strongest message: as a negative example.

Yes, it may benefit the environment on a few counts. It has indeed reduced heat transmission through the metal sheet roof, and sequesters carbon to the tune of about 1kg in a year (which is not much - an average tree does 13kg).

Look deeper and it is more bane than boon. Grass needs sun, so I seek it out daily instead of retreating into the shade. Cooling the car from that takes more air-conditioning, and all the heat necessitates watering it twice a day, meaning using 6 litres of water more than before. Lugging around the 8kg contraption consumes more fuel, as does the wind drag, which doubles when I roll down the windows because it is cooler.

This is what I really want to tell the givers of praise (“So clever!”, “Very green idea!”,“This must be Singapore’s first!” “Congratulations, something special”), but I know that would spoil their enthusiasm and good intentions.

It’s highly ironic that something ungreen is seen as environmentally-friendly. But now The Sunseeker, doing its rounds around Bukit Timah, can warn against “Greenwashing”, where companies tout their products as the latter when they are only carbon hungry and profit motivated.

Greenwashing may manifest in things as small as reusable shopping bags, which only consume less carbon than plastic bags only if used more than 100 times (I hoard 10; mea culpa), or as large as condominium projects such as The Raintree, which only surely cut a few of its namesake down rather than integrate with nature.

If The Sunseeker can open people’s eyes to this false marketing and easy ignorance, then it might be a worthwhile sacrifice.