The fact that he took on the “ugly” mega-retailer is brilliant! He’ll have more impact in changing minds about sustainability and in the end WalMart stockholders (and hopefully associates) will become even wealthier. In simple terms, it’s a two-part battle. One is reinventing business practices (manufacturing, distributing, etc.). Two is getting consumers to break their old habits (the winning of hearts and minds we hear about in military terms these days). We’re set in our ways and as a whole, comfortably lazy – why change something good, right? The single most important change agent concerning this topic (and many other issues) is money. As soon as the average Joe realizes buying a green product is better on his wallet, we’ll see change. But initially, the burden isn’t on the consumer because there really isn’t a viable choice or benefit. However, let’s not forget that a bazillion people (smart and not-so-smart) shop at WalMart everday, 24/7. This is an enormous opportunity to tap into their TV and magazine brains and get them to ease into changing their “environmentally unconscious” minds.

The word GREEN as it is associated with environmental consciousness is an agent of marketing, nothing more. It’s a really poor choice of word to describe a more dynamic concept. First of all, green is a color and people respond very emotionally to color. (Red for stop, white for hero, black for villain, etc). Sustainability and/or the degradation of Earth can’t really be quantified by a color, even blue in my opinion. The world doesn’t necessarily need another green (or BLUE) colored website, logo, or packaged product. What the world needs is people breaking old, wasteful, and dangerous habits. There’s nothing wrong with tapping into something emotional like the color green or blue as long as the focus is on the end result, which is a healthy planet. But like so many things in the wonderful world of marketing and advertising, it’s really easy to create a monster and allow it to run wild as long as the short-term cash is flowing (until the next “fill-in-the-blank ______________revolution”).

The problem as I see it at large is that we lack a popular integral model of “a complete person” in the public sphere separate of “things” that makes sense. Then there’s a question of how that person fits in to the world at large? People lack a complete picture of how these colors — whether they’re blue, green, or whatever — could all rationally fit together to create a vibrant planet hosting healthy civil societies with empowered individuals. But having that color-coding at least semi-agreed upon would be a huge step in the right direction toward educating and inspiring the public, don’t you think? Or has this proposal already been done before?

For instance, green already stands for healing the earth, saving humanity and reducing the ecological footprint of the individual. Blue could stand for healing and maintaining the body for optimum health. Yellow could symbolize the pursuit of happiness, self-knowledge, and self-expression. Purple could then stand for the freedom of all individuals on this planet to pursue their fullest human potential regardless of “anything.” Brown could represent the importance of veritable community joined together by a cooperative spirit since, like the ground, it’s the foundation for all development. Pink could continue to stand for gender equality. Red could stand for creating an evolving integrated economic framework like prout.org that seeks to benefit everyone. Red is symbolic as a way of saying that, metaphorically speaking, money, like blood, needs to always be circulating in order for any society to remain hale. Moreover, we still need to inspire others to not buy into the illusion that you can simultaneously suppress, exploit, and manipulate consumers conjunct production and call it wealth. Either white or black could then be the color that brings it all together? Or in your opinion what could the colors be identified with how would they complement each other?

All of the creative progressives (a.k.a. cultural creatives, etc.) could use something like this coding system as our North Star as we essentially strive to question and redesign everything in the public interest.