World Water Day: Is Blue The New Green?

Today it’s World Water Day. We all know how important water is for life. Still, the process of privatization of water resources and exploitation of precious water areas for commercial use are ongoing. Who owns and has access to water is predicted to be one of the major topics for this century.

How much water is used to produce your T-shirt? The amount of water used to irrigate cotton is greater than that of all the households worldwide.

Some people say “Blue is the new Green”. This might be true, and the water issue is extremely important to ecology, but it can also become just the new toy for marketing gurus to play with. As green has gone mainstream, blue is just the next thing. Therefore I liked the statement of Nick Rosen who recently told Ode Magazine, that the environmental movement should choose brown as their new color, because the color and the word brown are harder to make sexy.

According to Rosen, green was a word that stood for an era of less materialism and zero growth. “It took us a long time to establish the word, but now it has been hijacked by the people we were trying to distinguish ourselves from. Manufacturers, advertisers, marketeers: They pretend we can live on with our lives the way we did, as long as we check the label. They have made ‘green’ into a fashion item. Now everything is green.” So, brown is the new green . Wait a minute, how many colors are there in the rainbow?

I think the answer is different. Look at the earth, what do you see? Blue. Green. White. Black. Brown. We don’t need a simple color to advertise sustainability. We need awareness and action. And we need to build this movement together, manufacturer, marketeer or old school eco hippy, those distinctions are from yesterday. What counts is what responsibility you take and how you live it.

Also see:

Worldwaterday in Berlin

Blue Planet Project