Mountain Dew’s Green Label Art is a catastrophe

[ I've been thinking about starting a blog for a while. I had some great conversations this past weekend, which almost inspired me to create it last night. Today, however, I ran across Mountain Dew's Green Lable Art and it pushed me over the edge into bloglandia. ]

I like that the word green is used to describe environmentally-friendly products and services. It links environmentally sustainable economic and design practices with a strong, efficient economy. Plus it’s much more friendly and less hippy-fied than “environmentally-friendly”, “Earth conscious”, etc. But what I don’t like is that is can so easily be used to greenwash items – or at least imply that something is more green than it really is.

Mountain Dew’s Green Label Art advertising campaign – while making no claim to being environmentally conscious in any way – is just another case of co-opting environmentalism to push obsolete products like high-fructose corn syrup-saturated fizzy water. There is nothing wrong with soda (especially if it made with natural sugars and you recycle the can), but there is definitely something wrong with calling a campaign directed towards less-than-contentious teenagers green. It can be no coincidence that they choose that name and base this campaign around urban artists (who generally fall towards the true green crowd).

On the plus side of the situation, it is nice to see a campaign by a soft drink company sponsor creative expression, though I’m sure no dissension will be tolerated. It’s just unfortunate Mountain Dew didn’t link this with release of a healthier version of its product.