Sustainability Meets Authenticity

In Seattle, two guys have a successful business making custom furniture from old trees destroyed by storms or lost to development. Which is cool, but I have to say that the whole language of basing a corporate identity on "green values," on "sustainability authenticity," on the clever contrivance of a natural-seeming identity, makes me a little queasy. Like:

Janet Pomeroy, board president of the San Francisco-based Green Chamber of Commerce, says the green businesses that do well nationally are those that have an authentic story to sell.

To an ever increasing extent, we don't so much buy things as spend money to associate ourselves with certain values. When those values are inherently anti-commercial -- authenticity, preservation, love of nature -- the business of buying and selling them brings with it layers of irony and a hint of moral confusion.