Today I get the enjoyment of visiting another home show that is attracting visitors with a “think green” theme. Their website is promoting the theme along with their other forms of advertisements. Since my review of the Boston home show with a green theme was rather poor I decided to set up some standards prior to my visit. I will create a list of standards of how I will judge both the show’s promotion and how I will judge the vendors.

Show Standards

1. Does the show promote a green theme?

2. Are all of the signs and handouts informing people about the green theme and the benefits of going green?

3. Is the show holding classes or providing the public with an education about why they should buy green products?

4. Is the show actively seeking green product vendors or are they just looking for vendors with money?

5. Are the vendors being held to any standards when they promote their product as a green product?

6. Is the show asking vendors to promote their green products with signs or hand outs?

Vendor Standards

1. Are the vendors actually promoting a green product line?

2. Are the vendors informing people about the benefits of using their green product line?

3. Are the products actually green products?

4. Can the vendor rep (person at the booth) answer these questions:

A) Why is your product green?

B) What makes your product green?

C) Who says that your product is green?

D) What plans does your company have for introducing more green products?

E) How long will your green product last compared to a non green product?

F) Is your product approved by the IGPCC? I made this term up in order to see how many people will lie if they don’t know! Hopefully there is not really an International Green Product Council Coalition (IGPCC) if so, I will like an idiot thinking that I made up the term! Each vendor will get an equal chance of telling me the truth.

5. Does the vendor have any passion about selling a green product line?

Hopefully I should have my review of the show posted later on this evening. If you can think of any other standards that I should add to my list feel free to post them (leave a comment).

I keep harping on the fact that the East coast of the United States is lacking when it comes to using green products. Once in a while a company will promote their products as green in order to stir up some interest. For the most part I feel that people driving 10mpg SUV’S will drive 20 miles to buy a bottle of “green boat cleaner” for their 20 gallon per hour boat. I’m not sure what got me started on this rant, the purpose of this article is my review of the spring home show in Boston.

For some reason the home show at the World Trade Center in Boston had a green theme this year. Their website has a green theme and some good green content, even their program guide for the show talks about their green theme. While this sounds like a great way to promote green home improvements and green products, very few of their vendors sold green products. I doubt that it would of taken much of an effort to ask vendors to promote their products as being green if their products were in fact green. Since I had my kids with me I only walked the show floor once, generally I will walk a show floor 3 times before passing judgment (I might of missed a booth or two).

After reviewing all of the booths, I only invited 3 vendors to submit a story about their products that I would publish on this blog. Two of the vendors sold metal roofing with lifetime warranties and the other vendor sold a solar heating system. If my memory serves me correctly the solar heating company had a “green theme” for their booth while the roofing vendors sort of missed the focus of the show.

I noticed a bunch of booths that had products that could be considered green if they promoted them as such. For example the microfiber cleaning rags really do save on the use of paper towels and they can be washed over and over. Another example are the pots and pans that last a lifetime compared to the Teflon ones that last 2-3 years if you are lucky. Some of the larger vendors sold some products that could be considered green while selling other products that are far from being green. In my humble opinion a company’s green image is tarnished when their only motive is to jump on a trend with some products while most of their non trendy products are far from being green. I can only imagine their internal mission statement “we will try to promote some of our products as green while we sell 90% non green products to compete with our green product line”. I wonder if a really good PR campaign can overcome the losses of selling a company’s integrity?